


We Weren't Made For Paradise

by Vanya_Instance



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e25 This Side of Paradise, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Female James T. Kirk, Friends to Lovers, Genderswap, Kirk uses she/her pronouns and identifies as a woman, Leonard "Bones" McCoy is So Done, Mutual Pining, Pollen antics, Romance, Slow Burn, mind altering pollen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28340745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vanya_Instance/pseuds/Vanya_Instance
Summary: 'Captain's log, stardate 3417.7. Except for myself, all crew personnel have transported to the surface of the planet. Mutinied. Lieutenant Uhura has effectively sabotaged the communications station. I can only contact the surface of the planet. The ship can be maintained in orbit for several months, but even with automatic controls, I cannot pilot her alone. In effect, I am marooned here. I'm beginning to realize just how big this ship really is, how quiet. I don't know how to get my crew back, how to counteract the effects of the spores. I don't know what I can offer against paradise.'-'This Side of Paradise' (TOS, Episode 1x25)Kirk learned just over one year ago, that she could offer nothing against paradise. But in a disaster plagued ship, Spock receives a second chance to find his own paradise.To find happiness.Though Kirk has accepted it is not with her, she’ll be damned if she has to end it a second time.
Relationships: James T. Kirk & Spock, James T. Kirk/Spock
Comments: 40
Kudos: 85





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fan fiction using characters from Star Trek which is created by Gene Roddenberry. I do not claim ownership of the characters or world of Star Trek.
> 
> The story is my own, everything else belongs to their respective creators. I do not claim their original show or characters as my own. I write purely for pleasure and gain no profit from this.

_Captain James Tiberius Kirk stood in the Transporter room entirely alone aboard the Starship Enterprise._

_The faint buzzing, whirrs and hums of the starship, as familiar to her as her own breathing patterns seemed so much louder than they had ever been before. Was it the isolation that enhanced these ordinary sounds, or the rising guilt about what it was she knew she had to do to save her ship and its crew?_

_____

Omicron Ceti III had seemed at first like a miracle. A planet, upon which any humanoid life should have perished within weeks, was home to a thriving colony of forty-five survivors. The Berthold Rays, which should have proved so entirely lethal, had failed to extend their fatal grasp on the colony that had lived there for almost four years with no deaths.

Indeed the colonists were in perfect health.

They were in perfect health, perfectly happy in this perfect little slice of paradise. Yet James Kirk was never one not to trust her instincts and her instincts were telling her than underneath this wondrous, miraculous and faultless existence the agricultural colony claimed to be the ideal, there was something that didn’t feel quite right.

She was correct.

But it was already too late.

When Kirk finally realised that the pink flowers which grew freely around Omicron Ceti III were expulsing mind altering spores, her entire crew had been affected. There were thousands upon thousands of microscopic spores within those flowers, just biding their time and awaiting the opportunity to inhabit a human body.

Kirk had given them more than that. She provided over four-hundred bodies as her crew descended one by one, abandoning their posts and joining the colony on the planet down below.

Kirk was powerless to make them stop their teleportation planetside. Her persuasions, her orders, even her pleading was met with indifference. Her words fell on deaf ears. Kirk and her starship were to be abandoned.

What could she offer against paradise?

So the ship had grown silent, and empty, and the corridors felt longer than they had ever been before. The sliding doors from chamber to chamber sounded offensively loud in the almost silence of the Enterprise and Kirk, the sole survivor, was alone. The single blip of a fading pulse, the last of a waning heartbeat on a ship usually so voracious and energy-filled Kirk could swear it had a life of its own.

When she was at her most low, the spores took her. She had no place in the command chair when she no longer had anyone left to command. So Kirk sat behind the helm, lost and entirely isolated. She felt beaten. Utterly beaten. The spores which exploded from the stamen of the blasted flower which had caused this to happen in the first place, covered her, and she had no choice but to breathe it in and let the spores take hold. Their effect wiped away Kirk’s mourning as easily as crumbs swept off a table.

_How had I felt so defeated before?_ She wondered.

It was all so clear now.

The ship was dying, but the planet below? Why it was perfect! With her friends, her crew and everything she could desire down there, what could a life in the sky provide to her now?

Kirk had packed her meagre suitcase, eager to leave this too empty and cold starship and transport to Omicron Ceti III. When her bag was packed, the last thing she needed to retrieve was her medals. They had always meant a lot to her, another perfectly happy memory to bring down to the planet below.

She opened the drawer she kept her medals in and pulled out a sleek black box. The medal the box held appeared so shiny and pristine, Kirk observed with some emotion. This medal in particular had been hard earned. She and her crew had worked in the most difficult conditions and had emerged battered but ultimately victorious. The Enterprise and the crew who served her could often be tried, pushed and battered but they could never be beaten. Pride swelled in her heart, as she recalled those precious moments of victory. But they were stilled when a cool thought settled in her mind.

_Is this what I will be leaving behind?_

_The adventure? The exploration? The danger? The intrigue?_

Her heart beat heavily in her chest and like waking from a dream for just a second she found the delusion weakened its hold, but the spores soon took back control, their grip on her mind was ironclad.

_This was doubt and nothing more,_ Kirk reasoned. _On Omicron Ceti III I will have nothing to doubt about. I will be happy there._

Kirk picked up her suitcase and hurried to the transporter room.

Soon she’d be reunited with Bones, who was sipping on an ice cold mint julep, with Sulu who was so eagerly exploring the beauteous nature the planet had to offer, and even with Spock who was reunited with his long lost love. She was human girl whom he had met many years ago. It was long before he had met Kirk.

They were in love.

‘No,’ she said aloud suddenly, her thoughts suddenly becoming clearer.

‘No!’ she repeated louder, as if anyone could hear her when she was so entirely alone.

Wouldn’t that be how it stayed? While Spock and his lady-love Leila Kalomi frolicked and laughed and kissed and lived in a life of pure and perfect enchantment, wouldn’t Kirk still be alone?

What hurt more, the loneliness and isolation, or the knowledge that Spock had found love, perfection and paradise on a planet without her?

‘I… Can’t… Leave!’ Kirk choked out. Her mind was turbulent. Anger, rejection, sadness and regret formed an acidic presence in her mind and with an ignition of doubt the spores could survive no longer.

This was madness and Kirk could allow it to go on no further.

These emotions, raw, violent and angry -visceral emotions- freed her.

She knew what she had to do. 

But she knew the cost it would have.

So now Kirk found her mind once again her own, she the Captain of a dying and lonely starship, crewless and against insurmountable odds, in the transporter room, hoping that her plan, as extreme as it was would work. Kirk had worked against worse odds before.

‘Anger,’ she said to herself with a grin. Then with more authority, Kirk addressed the ship’s computer. ‘Captain's log. Supplemental. I think I've discovered the answer but to carry out my plan entails considerable risk. Mister Spock is much stronger than the ordinary human being. Aroused, his great physical strength could kill. But it's a risk I'll have to take.’

Kirk straightened her back, once again feeling like control was returning to her hands. This was a dangerous plan at best and reckless and potentially deadly at worst. It was the perfectly _human_ plan that would work best against aliens, spore and Vulcan alike.

‘Enterprise to Spock,’ Kirk said, careful to keep her voice light.

‘Spock here,’ was the reply.

‘It’s Jim.’

‘What’s keeping you, Jim? We’ve been waiting.’

‘I’ve been packing some things, and I realise there's some equipment here that we should have down at the settlement. You know we can't come back on board once the last of us has left.’

‘Do you want me to beam up a party?’ was Spock’s response.

How remarkable that even in an altered state Spock could still seem so practical.

‘No,’ Kirk said easily. ‘I think you and I can handle it. Why don’t you beam up now?’

‘Just a moment,’ Spock replied dutifully.

A moment passed.

‘Ready to beam up, Jim.’

Kirk observed the Transporter desk, a large iron bar in her hands, ready for the return of the Vulcan.

Now James Kirk was not a woman of inconsiderate strength. Gender was as little a concern aboard the starship as species or planet of origin. She sparred with her male counterparts and trained on her own regularly enough to find comfort in her own strength.

Yet, like many of her crewmates aboard the Enterprise, she was somewhat hindered by the limitations of her human strength. She would never be able to overpower a Klingon singlehandedly and she could never face a Gorn in a fair fight and live to tell the tale.

She certainly could never take a Vulcan on in a fight and expect to emerge unscathed.

But that was currently just what she had to do.

On Omicron Ceti III Kirk had seen the happiness in Spock’s eyes. The openness and freedom of emotion- almost like that of a human- in the body of a Vulcan was impossible for her not to have noticed.

_Was it fair to take away such freedom of emotion from Spock?_

_Who gave me the right to remove such apparent happiness?_

Such thoughts made her hesitate as she looked at the transporter table, but she soon steeled her nerves. It may be unpleasant, but this was her only option. Kirk needed to get Spock to the point where he could help her regain control of her crew and free them of the spores.

For that to happen she needed Spock to be her second in command again.

Kirk hardened her heart and concealed her feelings in a way that even the most emotionally repressed Vulcan would have found impressive in a human. She was hurting yes, but she was the Captain of this starship and she put its needs and needs of her crew before her own.

‘Energising,’ Kirk said, her voice finely controlled.

Spock energised into the transporter room and it was no longer time to worry. It was the time for action.

‘All right, you mutinous, disloyal, computerised, half-breed, we'll see about you deserting my ship,’ Kirk said with some venom to the unsuspecting Vulcan. The iron bar in her hand was a threat and she meant it as such.

Spock looked at his captain, so steely eyed and stern.

‘The term half-breed is somewhat applicable, but computerised is inaccurate. A machine can be computerised, not a man,’ Spock corrected easily, there was humour in his voice.

‘What makes you think you're a man?’ Kirk continued to goad. ‘You're an overgrown jackrabbit, an elf with a hyperactive thyroid.’

Spock wondered if this was one of those human jokes, a practical joke, the nuances of which often escaped his understanding.

‘Jim,’ he said with an easy smile. ‘I don’t understand-’

‘Of course you don't understand,’ Kirk interrupted. ‘You don't have the brains to understand. All you have is printed circuits.’

It was easy to put an angry edge to her tone. Spock’s gentle smile, directly only towards her and her alone had been a worse jolt of pain than a dagger’s blade piercing through something vital.

A moment passed between the two officers as Spock passed by Kirk and walked towards the transporter controls. Spock had grown tired of Kirk’s instigation and provocation and he was not going to rise to the challenge. 

The good-humour left his tone.

‘Captain, if you'll excuse me-’

‘What can you expect from a simpering, devil-eared freak whose father was a computer and his mother an encyclopaedia?’ Kirk interrupted once more as she rushed up the steps to the teleportation chamber effectively blocking Spock’s path back towards the teleportation area.

She let the venom she felt towards herself poison each word she spat.

‘My mother was a teacher,’ Spock said, his tone carefully even. ‘My father an ambassador.’

Kirk knew this; Spock had spoken to her about his parents countless times. Why now was she claiming ignorance about his life?

‘Your father was a computer, like his son,’ Kirk said with maliciousness. ‘An ambassador from a planet of traitors. A Vulcan never lived who had an ounce of integrity.’

She could see in his eyes Spock was losing his cool, easy and relaxed demeanour. His face was impassive, and despite the power of the spores altering his mind, the Vulcan’s control over his emotions was notable.

Kirk knew she had to push him further, further, further and make him _break_.

Spock’s voice was finely controlled, too finely controlled.

‘Captain, please don't-‘

‘You're a traitor from a race of traitors.’ Kirk was practically shouting now and her aggravation was clear, ‘Disloyal to the core, _rotten_ like the rest of your subhuman race. And you've got the gall to make love to that _girl_.’

A cool second of silence passed in the room.

Kirk’s heart was pumping adrenaline through her body and her awareness was at an all-time high. She knew those words would hurt Spock because they had hurt her to say, each word a mallet strike further deepening the stake of regret embedded in her heart. But her anger was present and clear. It was anger that Spock would choose Leila, a woman he knew from six years ago over the Enterprise, leaving it to die. It was anger that Spock would so recklessly disregard the fate of his crew to be with Leila on Omicron Ceti III. And the most anger-provoking of all, was that Spock had so easily chosen Leila over her.

Kirk’s chest was heaving angry breaths.

‘That’s enough,’ Spock warned.

But it wasn’t enough. Kirk had to do more. She had to _hurt_ Spock more.

‘Does she know what she's getting, Spock?’ she asked. ‘A carcass full of memory banks who should be squatting in a mushroom, instead of passing himself off as a man? You belong in a circus, Spock, not a starship… right next to the dog-faced boy.’

Spock had turned from Kirk, and so she could no longer see his expression but her rejection of his place on the starship and the callous remarks had to have been enough.

There was a pause. The room seemed to stand still.

Then Spock span around, arm raised, infuriated. Kirk’s had pushed and prodded and goaded enough. It was clear she wanted to anger him and anger him she had. That measly iron bar that she held in her hands was no match for the superior Vulcan strength and it only took one hand to practically fling her smaller form to the other end of the transporter room where her body hit the wall with a thud, the now crushed iron bar discarded in a useless heap.

Kirk’s reactions were lightning fast though and she managed to quickly get out of the way of Spock’s incoming punch. It made impact with the wall, easily smashing one of the monitors, glass cracking, smashing and falling to the ground. But Kirk was no longer there. Where the Vulcan’s moves were slow and strong, fuelled with unbridled rage, Kirk’s moves were quicker and more nimble. She flashed underneath Spock’s swinging arms and landed a quick punch to his gut.

Spock’s responding blow packed more of a punch and Kirk was flung once again towards the wall. Spock could throw her about as if she weighed less than nothing and she was a ragdoll beneath the rage of the Vulcan scorned.

Disorientated from being pushed with great force Kirk’s legs buckled and she fell to the ground. She just needed a second to gain her bearings but she didn’t have the time, the figure of Spock loomed ominously above her, a giant and a mouse, Samson and Goliath. In his hands, raised high above his head was a metal stool, an impromptu weapon that would be much more of a danger to Kirk than the iron bar had proved to be for him.

Kirk’s breath caught in her throat. She had no escape, caught and at Spock’s mercy. She raised her hands in surrender but the madness stayed in his eyes.

This human before him, so small and frail, she had riled him to the point of madness, like a matador waving a red flag at a bull she had managed to push every button of aggravation in his being. As the commander of this ship she knew its every secret and it’s every power. This woman, James Kirk, knew him just as well, his every weakness, fear, and concern and she had used them against him.

Why?

Anger, rage, fury, ego and confusion grew together in the half-Vulcan in a way he had never experienced until now.

No woman- no that wasn’t correct, no human or any other creature in these great galaxies could make Spock feel like this. Know him to his very core and expose his every vulnerability with the skill of a master surgeon.

Kirk could see the light dim in Spock’s eyes, back to their familiar intelligence.

‘Had enough?’ Kirk asked cautiously. Her hands were still raised in surrender in case he had not.

‘I didn't realise what it took to get under that thick hide of yours,’ she said with an almost smile.

Spock lowered the stool suddenly conscious about the madness that had been in his actions.

‘Anyhow,’ Kirk continued easily. ‘I don't know what you're so mad about.’

She bounced back up into a standing position, rolling out her aching joints and muscles.

‘It isn't every first officer who gets to belt his Captain…several times,’ she said, rolling her jaw.

There was a heady mix of gentle humour and ill hidden concern on her face, though it was now harder for Spock to read her expressions.

‘You did that to me deliberately,’ he said.

Kirk found Spock’s expression equally as hard to read.

‘Believe me, Mister Spock, it was painful… in more ways than one.’

Kirk braced her shoulder. She wouldn’t have been surprised from the pain in the joint if Spock had made a halfway decent attempt to rip her arm from her socket. He had not held back in that fight and Kirk had never better understood the Vulcan’s desire for ridding themselves of rage and violent emotions until now.

‘The spores,’ Spock said slowly. ‘They're gone.’

He paused then sighed.

‘I don't belong anymore.’

Kirk’s heart ached at the pain in the Vulcan’s tone. It was more subtle than when he was affected by the spores sure, but it was more earnest. Kirk knew that she could provide no comfort to him, so she remained sombre.

‘You said they were benevolent and peaceful. Violent emotions overwhelm them, destroy them. I had to make you angry enough to shake off their influence. That's the answer, Mister Spock,’ she said, more emphatically than she had intended.

It was an excuse, but it was all she had.

‘That may be correct, Captain, but trying to initiate a brawl with over five hundred crewmen and colonists is hardly logical.’

‘I had something else in mind,’ Kirk said easily, as she guided him to the door of the transporter room. ‘Can you put together a subsonic transmitter? Something we can hook into the communications station and broadcast over the communicator?’

Spock paused in momentary thought.

‘It can be done,’ he agreed.

‘Good. Let's get to work,’ she said as she left the transporter room with a feeling of purpose and urgency.

Spock lingered for a second.

‘Captain,’ he called.

Kirk stopped and turned to face him again.

‘Striking a fellow officer is a court martial offence,’ he said cautiously.

Kirk looked thoughtful for a moment, rubbing her hands idly.

‘Well,’ she said eventually. ‘If we're both in the Brig, who's going to build the subsonic transmitter?’

Spock paused in thought once again, then quirked a brow.

‘That is quite logical, Captain,’ he replied.

Kirk smiled. It was the easiest smile she had made in days at the Vulcan man before her. His return to normalcy was more perfect than that pitiful excuse of paradise of Omicron Ceti III could dream of providing.

She and Spock, once again easily falling into stride with each other, made their way swiftly to the helm, ready to retrieve their crew.

\---

The subsonic transmitter created an aggravating sensation that was enough to bring the crew and the agricultural settler’s back to their right minds once again, but for Laila, Spock’s beau, the rejection of Spock and his reversion back to his usual state was enough to break the charm that the spores held over her without the need of the transmitter.

Spock could no longer empathise or comfort Leila as he had once been able to do, so the duty fell to Kirk to soothe the heartbroken girl on their journey to Starbase Twenty Seven, all while nursing a heartbreak of her own.

Kirk had seen how Spock acted on that planet, how he had smiled and kissed and laughed and loved.

Loved someone who wasn’t her.

She knew that she had to break him out of it, for the good of the planet and the good of the ship. He was the only one who could help her, he was her second in command, but the guilt she felt in ripping away Spock’s chance to experience happiness was unequalled to anything she had ever felt in her life. It felt perverted and selfish that she had deemed it her right to remove such a thing.

As Leila wept in her arms, Kirk stroked her hair gently and let her express her sorrow.

‘I love him,’ she cried. ‘We were happy there. We could have still have been happy there now but he changed once again, to the Mister Spock who I knew from before. He’s returned to the man who I loved who wouldn’t even touch me, who couldn’t kiss me or put his arms around me. We can never return to paradise, and I shall never be happy with him again.’

Kirk shed tears too, and continued to hold Leila close.

‘Oh James,’ she sighed between the tears. ‘I love him. I still love him and on Omicron Ceti III he told me he loved me. He told me he could love me.’

The guilt, the heavy, stomach-wrenching guilt was Kirk’s punishment. The regret and shame that she still envied Leila’s mourning was her retribution. She was the one who separated them, who meant they could never be together, and Leila was still the one who Spock loved. That knowledge was a bitter pill but it would become her cross to bear. The jealousy she felt seemed obscene.

The knowledge that Spock _could_ love on Omicron Ceti III, and he had not loved her, tore out Kirk’s heart and stomped on it with Starfleet-issued heavy-soled regulation boots.

‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,’ Kirk had quoted to Leila.

Leila in her grief had scoffed at Kirk’s comforting words, though Kirk knew over time they would begin to ring true. To Kirk they already held much value, though the thought made her heart ache anew.

Upon arrival at Starbase Twenty Seven, when the settlers were sent on their merry way, and their presence faded to just a memory, Kirk found the pain in her heart began to fade. She tried to forget what had happened on that dreadful planet and over time the sharp stabbing pain of jealousy, envy and rejection faded to the dull pain of heartache.

It was a pain that Kirk found never quite truly went away.

Regardless, Kirk worked just as efficiently as before. Her relationship with Spock did not change in any way and any discomfort that could have been felt between her and her commander was put down to the fact that Kirk still regretted having to insult Spock so greatly to get him to return to his usual self. Spock however had let it be known to Kirk that he knew that she did what had to be done. If the roles were reversed he would have been willing to do the same.

Bones was all too quick to quip that it would be a lot easier for Spock to rile someone up than the other way around. He already riled Bones up into a rage at least three times a week.

Within a few months the mission to Omicron Ceti III had been all but forgotten and within the year it was a distant memory. The only reminders of their time there was Kirk’s broken heart, Bone’s regrown appendix and whatever pollen and clipping samples remained from the mysterious pink flowers that lay in the botany section of the life sciences department for the science officers to further research their usage in protection against Berthold rays and its radiation.


	2. Chapter 1: The Issue du Jour

The Starship Enterprise had a unique relationship with the idea of normality. If normality was to be defined as what was usual, frequent and typical, then three years into a five year mission, normality had become increasing relative.

These days, Kirk was beginning to suspect that normality aboard the Enterprise was when something terrible was making her life difficult. Normality was when the universe created a problem, a special headache, formulated just for her. 

Indeed, every week seemed to have another event that tested the captain and her crew to their limit. Their pledge to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to forever boldly go where no man had gone before, meant that normality, had become expecting the unexpected.

The issue du jour, placed upon a silver platter for Kirk and her crew to contend with was a mysterious virus that had somehow made its way onto the ship. Likely it had come from their most recent landing party’s exploration upon a promising Class M planet whose technological advancements were progressing at a speed very similar to that of Andor and whose people bore more than a passing resemblance to the Andorians, with the one notable difference being that their skin sported a green hue, rather than the Andorian blue.

The planet had been explored; its people, its natural resources and its flora and fauna were thoroughly documented, whilst keeping interaction minimal with the inhabitants. The research party had returned with detailed notes, a great deal of interesting samples and slides for the science officers to whet their appetite for information upon, and apparently, an unknown virus they had become infected with during their time on the planet.

Said mysterious virus was fast spreading and enfeebling, with symptoms similar to the human flu but with harsh effects on the sickened person’s respiratory system. Within forty-eight hours over half the ship was quarantined. With contact to the people of this Class M planet having been kept minimal, the precise information of this illness, and more desirably a cure, had been unavailable.

The men and women of the landing party had been the first infected but their considerable journey throughout the ship after they returned, travelling from sector to sector to deliver the relevant information to the correct departments had caused the virus to spread like wildfire. They had, of course, not recognised that they were carriers of a mysterious virus, but aware or not, that had been the case.

Leonard McCoy, known by his friends as Bones, and known by all aboard the Enterprise as the Chief Medical Officer, had a veritable time bomb on his hands. Like waiting for a precariously arranged line of dominoes to fall over, any crew member at any moment could begin to show signs of the illness, and it was only a matter of time before the true extent of its effects was in sight. By now, two weeks after the symptoms had begun to appear on some of the crew, Bones knew that this illness would have considerable implications aboard the ship. He walked from deck to deck in a large foreboding biohazard suit, feeling distinctly like the plague doctor of yore, looming over the ill, travelling from house to house hoping to provide some aid to the sickness that afflicted so many. He relieved symptoms as best he could with painkillers, hypos and even IVs of fluid when necessary- though it had seemed like backwoods hick medicine to physically insert a needle into a patient.

But for all his efforts, it was like putting a bandaid on a stab wound, and felt at times just as effective. Having turned the majority of the medical bay into a quarantine zone, and confining three times as many crew members to their quarters with strict orders not to leave their rooms under any circumstance, his already acerbic mood was growing harsher. His steps were awkward in the biohazard suit, bulky and unwieldy but each step forward sounded with more force than was entirely necessary, stomping his way around the starship to visit the ill.

Those who were in suits of their own found Bones’ grumbling practically inaudible. What wasn’t muffled from his suit was certainly blurred by frustration exacerbating his southern accent.

Though, some may have heard him berating the ships laxity in its use of decontamination chambers after missions.

 _‘They ain’t there to be storage chambers that’s for damn sure,’_ Bones grumbled as he stomped from the crew living quarters back to the sickbay for the fifteenth time that day. ‘ _Decontamination chambers outside the transport room and no one thinks to check protocol is being followed. One damn slip up and the whole ship is on its knees. Why when I get my hands on the Captain I’ll throttle her quicker than-‘_

‘Jim!’ Bones exclaimed dryly. ‘Just the devil I’ve been looking for.’

‘Is that so?’ A familiar smile graced her lip.

‘And a bonus devil too. Though this one I’ve been in less of a hurry to find.’

‘Doctor,’ was Spock’s reserved reply.

Both the Captain and the First Officer were in their own biohazard suits, vastly more comfortable encased in the stuffy, sweltering heat of the suit than Bones was.

‘How goes the efforts of you and your medical crew, Bones?’

‘No fatalities yet, Jim. Thank heavens for small mercies at least. But the crew is falling like flies here. We need a cure or a relief for the symptoms as soon as possible. No one is better yet, and who’s to say that in another week those afflicted won’t be having more serious health concerns.’

‘With the effect this illness has on the respiratory system even the healthiest of our crew could become seriously compromised,’ Spock added.

‘And yet you remain fine. Vulcan physiology may not be susceptible to this illness. Or perhaps it’s reluctant to enter the body of a hobgoblin.’

Spock merely quirked an eyebrow and turned to his captain.

‘It appears that the strain the dropping numbers in active crew members has placed on the day to day running of the ship is less than the strain it has placed on the ship’s doctor.’

‘You can say that again,’ was Bone’s muffled reply. ‘I’m up to my neck in new cases here and with no cure in sight I’m just hoping to ease symptoms until it all begins to pass.’

‘The science department is working around the clock,’ Spock said. ‘I’m sure a sufficient relief will be found in no time.’

‘I should hope so Mister Spock. Let’s hope a cure and a subsequent vaccine is all we need and not an influx of toe-tags.’

Kirk chuckled at Bone’s pessimism. She knew that he would work himself to the bone to help the patients aboard the starship and if a cure currently didn’t exist for this affliction then he would sure as hell create one.

No one would die from this illness, not if Bones could prevent it.

‘We are on our way to the life sciences department. Sulu believes there may be some plant samples taken from the planet we last visited that could be the key to what we are facing.’

‘And that requires the presence of the Captain? Or have you nothing better to do?’

‘With such a reduced crew it’s all hands on deck, Bones, as I’m sure you have noticed.’

Bones had, but grousing was in his nature. Kirk, accustomed, merely smiled in good-humour as she saw him scowl.

‘Well then,’ Bones said. ‘We’re not made of time then are we? Are you going to the botanical section or are you here to waste my time all day?’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it Bones,’ Kirk said sweetly.

Bones snorted as he walked on past the Captain and First Lieutenant, dismissing them with a wave of his hand.

‘We’ve been put in our place,’ Kirk said dryly to Spock who nodded in a humoured agreement.

They continued their stroll to the botanical section of the life science department. Bones and Spock seemed awfully assured that a cure could be found in no time, under the proper conditions. Kirk was no scientist but she trusted her crew enough to believe their assertions. If a cure could be found hidden in the plant samples the life science department held then it was up to Spock and Kirk to find it. Both dressed in their large suits, feeling very much like the spacemen of old, they ventured onwards.

The botanical storeroom in the life science department was cramped and not easy manoeuvred through at the best of times. The too close-together rows of metal shelves were lined with thousands of species of flora and fauna. Whilst beautiful to behold it was hard to traverse. That Spock and Kirk were in large, unwieldy biohazard suits only made it more difficult. Their travels through the rows upon rows of plant life proved time consuming. Kirk almost sighed in relief when she managed to reach the storeroom in the heart of the room and retrieve the slides. She held them up, displaying them victoriously to show to Spock who was still fighting his way past a prickly and overgrown plant Kirk found oddly familiar.

‘Do these appear to be what we are looking for, Spock?’ She returned to his side, handing him the slides to check.

‘I believe so, Jim.’

‘Excellent,’ Kirk said. ‘Then we shall make our return.’

‘Yes, I advise you to proceed with some caution Jim. These plants are of particular danger to our suits.’

‘I am always careful when I need to be, am I not?’ Kirk teased as she walked past Spock, heeding his warning.

‘I do not believe that to be entirely true, Jim. In fact I can think of a dozen examples or more where your lack of caution was apparent.’

‘Please attribute that to the human blood that pulses in my veins,’ she joked as she carefully eased past the many rows of plants. The journey to the heart of the botanical storeroom had not been easy, but the return proved less difficult.

‘I should more accurately attribute it to-‘

A tearing sound caused Spock’s words to still.

Kirk turned around to see Spock behind her, standing rigid and unmoving.

‘It appears, Captain that I failed to pay heed to my own warnings.’

Kirk saw the long gash in his suit. One of the long, ivy-like plants which were barbed with painful looking spines the size of fish hooks had been overhanging its allotted space, encroaching onto the slim pathway Spock and Kirk had been following. A large barb had impaled itself in Spock’s suit.

‘Nothing we can do about that now, Spock,’ Kirk said kindly. ‘We can just get you a new suit to change into. Why don’t you stay here and I’ll fetch you a new one. It would be unwise to risk contamination in our urgency.’

‘I agree,’ Spock said. ‘Though I recommend you deliver the slides to the science department’s laboratories first. This is somewhat time sensitive.’

‘Of course, Mr Spock.’

Spock stepped forward to hand Kirk the slides. He shook off the clinging, trailing plant with an exaggerated shrugging gesture. The action caused a plant beside the barbed ivy to be jostled by the large sleeves of his suit.

Defensively, it expelled an explosion of pollen.

Instinctively Spock clutched the slides to his chest, using his arms to cover them from the pollen as best he could.

It caused the rip in his suit to grow, exposing him to the pollen that flew into the air.

For a second, all was still. Kirk looked at Spock with wide eyes. It was not customary for him to be so clumsy with his movements. She could see the fogging at the sides of his helmet’s window and wondered if condensation in a faulty suit had impaired his vision.

She had no time to ponder it further as suddenly Spock knelt on the ground, groaning.

‘Spock,’ she exclaimed, crouching to his side. ‘What’s wrong?’

He thrust the slides into her chest, the action pushed her away from his curled up form. She grabbed them.

‘Get out of here,’ Spock groaned through gritted teeth.

‘I can’t leave you like this. What happened? This pollen, is it harming you?’

He couldn’t reply.

‘I’ll get M’Benga here immediately.’

‘No,’ Spock groaned, as he remained doubled over on the ground. ‘We have a job to do. Deliver those slides. My condition can wait.’

Kirk wanted to shout at him, shake his shoulders and tell him to stop being so damn level-headed for just a moment, but she knew she couldn’t.

‘I shall sort this crisis,’ she said tensely, ‘then I shall deal with this new issue which has been thrust upon us. Spock, I will return as quickly as I can and I shall bring, Bones, M’Benga, the whole damn sickbay if I must.’

Spock made a pained sound that almost resembled a laugh. It troubled Kirk enough that she could wait no longer. She placed a reassuring hand Spock’s shoulder, for just a moment, then stood up and continued to fight her way through the flora and fauna until she was at the door.

Once free, Kirk rushed to the Science department’s laboratory wing, using what mobility she had in the suit to run there. She swore angrily, frustrated that she had to waste precious time running from lab to lab in an attempt to find the correct room. Curse that there were fourteen fully functioning laboratories aboard the Enterprise and that she was unfamiliar with every one of them. Finally finding the correct laboratory she thrust the slides into the hands of a bewildered science officer before rushing away without explanation.

From there she rushed to the medical department almost running directly into Dr McCoy, who had been chatting to Sulu over a well needed cup of coffee. Kirk’s sides were aching from her marathon around the ship to find a doctor and her chest was so tight it felt like it may explode.

Her explanation was gasped out between pants and though mostly nonsensical, Bones had known Kirk long enough to comprehend.

‘Jim, breathe. Doctor’s orders,’ Bones said firmly. ‘Let me see if I have this straight. You and Spock were in the botany storeroom when his suit was ripped, and a plant gave out pollen that got in his suit and seems to have hurt him in some way?’

‘Yes,’ Kirk panted out.

‘I’m very familiar with the layout of the botanical section,’ Sulu said, having been present for Kirk’s panicked explanation. Sulu had been one of the unlucky members of the landing party first affected by the virus. He had been unwell for some time and was now thankfully recovering swiftly and without many further complications. He was still a patient in sickbay but he was eager to sink his teeth into the situation that had developed. Anything to allay some of the boredom a fortnight in a hospital bed could provide. ‘There is nothing fatal or notably dangerous in that area but there is some pretty nasty stuff with unpleasant side effects, most of which are also contagious. Spock was right to remain in the room, he effectively quarantined himself.’

‘Sulu is right Jim, if we don’t know what this is, Spock was right to have remained in the storeroom.’

Spock was always right.

Kirk despaired.

How could it be that ships like the USS Requiem could travel on a ten year mission and encounter only peaceful species and the occasional ion storm, when ships like the USS Enterprise, only in year three of a five year mission now had quarantine in place for not only one, but two, health emergencies?

‘Calm down Jim,’ Bones said as he watched her practically bound from toe to toe with nervous tension. ‘If you don’t stop that I’ll have you removed from sickbay. You’re making everyone nervous.’

‘Rightly so,’ Kirk countered. ‘We need some staff brought to the life sciences department so that Spock can receive medical assistance.’

‘Great idea Jim, I never would have thought of that,’ Bones said dryly.

‘That won’t be entirely necessary Doctor,’ a voice called from the door of the examination room. It was Nurse Chapel.

‘Why so, Nurse?’ Bones asked.

‘Lieutenant Spock has just been in contact with the Sickbay to inform us that he is in a stable condition, is not injured or facing anything life threatening and insists that he will remain in the botanical storeroom until this first crisis is sorted. From then he seems confident the issue will be resolved with ease.’

‘Is that what he thinks?’ Bones asked, hackles rising at Spock’s apparent self-diagnosis.

‘I did insist that Mr Spock scan himself for a more accurate diagnosis than _I presume all to be fine_ ,’ Nurse Chapel expanded. ‘Apart from some unusual activity in the caudate nucleus- well unusual for Vulcan, usual for humans I should suppose- there is nothing out of the ordinary.’

‘When it rains it pours,’ Bones groused. ‘Did he sound in his usual sorts?’

‘Mr Spock did not sound urgent or agitated when he reported,’ Chapel replied earnestly. ‘If not for admitting that he had been stuck by some pollen I would have presumed he was right as rain.’

‘Well that’s some reassurance at least, right Jim?’ Bones said, turning to his companion.

Kirk retained her troubled expression. There was something deep in the pit of her stomach, a deep and primal feeling. Aboard this shining beacon of mankind’s advancements a deeply primitive instinct of Jim’s was telling her something was wrong.

She couldn’t figure out what it was. But it seldom led her wrongly.

Spock had received worse injures before, but call it intuition or a sixth sense, Kirk knew all could not be as it seemed. Still, if Spock insisted that his health was not compromised and the scans of his body and health seemed to approve of that assertion, Jim would be a fool if she didn’t allow him to follow his insistence to remain in an isolated space until the more pressing issue aboard the ship was dealt with first.

‘How long shall it take to create a cure for this illness, Bones?’

‘Now that we have the slides, I’m confident we’ll have results within the next forty-eight hours, or at least have made significant headway. How long it takes to create a cure? That’s something I can’t predict I’m afraid.’

Kirk took a moment to assess the situation. With nothing deadly or poisonous in the area where Spock had torn his suit he wasn’t in any immediate danger. Yet Kirk knew that Spock had been affected by something. The pain on his contorted face had been considerable. However whatever had afflicted him had passed quickly, and had, according to the scans at least, left no lasting effects on the body. If Spock was content to remain in the botanical storeroom under a self-imposed quarantine, something supported by Bones, it would be unwise for her to express discontent.

Kirk was forced to acknowledge that in this situation, filled with science and medicine, she should leave it to the experts. She had total faith in the abilities of her fellow crew members and she should act as such even if it meant that she could be of little practical use.

‘I shall leave this in your capable hands, Doctor.’

‘Jim,’ Bones said with an easy nod. ‘Spock will be okay.’

Kirk merely nodded as she left the Ship’s Chief Medical Officer to do his duty before she returned to her quarters.

In her captain’s cabin Kirk found herself striding impatiently, almost prowling from one side of the room to the other, like a caged animal. She had taken off her biohazard suit, safe in the isolation of her own room. Next came off the captain’s shirt stripping down to just her black undershirt. She had changed from her regulation slacks to a pair of grey sweatpants too. She should have been comfortable and ready to get a little hard earned rest, but sleep remained elusive.

Kirk had worked this job long enough to know that being relaxed before going to sleep wasn’t a necessity, but a luxury. She couldn’t afford a clear mind and clear conscience every night when she captained a ship with a crew of over four hundred and thirty. There was always some issue, some impending disaster that interrupted her sleep.

It was part of the training at the Academy to sleep whenever, wherever you could. It wasn’t a hard skill to pick up. When one had worked tirelessly in emergency situation after emergency situation, it was all too easy to drop to the floor and sleep where you fell.

Today Kirk should have found sleep easy. She had physically and mentally exhausted herself. She should have fallen in the bed and been snoring before her head hit the pillow.

She could only kid herself for so long. She wasn’t an idiot. She knew what she was worried about.

Or rather, _who_ she was worried about.

She could pace no longer. Mulling things over was causing her put her mind at more unease than soothe it. Kirk threw on the uncomfortable biohazard suit, left her quarters and began her journey to the science department.

Once at her destination, Kirk was met by a closed door. She pressed the intercom for the room and waited impatiently for Spock to respond.

She buzzed the intercom once more, longer this time, then after waiting ten seconds buzzed again.

‘Spock, it’s Jim,’ she said sharply into the intercom, which was placed in the wall beside the sliding door. She glared at it like it was the machinery’s fault that she was without response.

She buzzed again.

‘Spock, I know you’re in there, open these damn doors at once.’

‘I’m afraid that I cannot do that Captain,’ a voice replied from the intercom speakers. It was faint but Kirk could hear Spock’s real voice through the doors too. The intercoms on each side of the wall were placed opposite each other.

‘What was your delay, Lieutenant?’ she asked, briskly.

‘I was resting captain,’ was the calm response.

 _Ah_.

Kirk felt foolishness rise within her. Of course. She was not the only one exhausted after the events of today. If Vulcans only need four hours sleep then Kirk reasoned that Spock’s sleep must have been hyper concentrated. He likely didn’t appreciate her waking him.

‘I apologise, Spock. Impatience overwhelmed me,’ Kirk said more resolved. ‘I did not mean to interrupt your sleep.’

‘It is quite alright, Captain.’

Spock sounded so like his usual self that Kirk suddenly found she doubted her initial suspicions on what had afflicted him.

‘Are you feeling alright?’ she said, worried she had forwent sleep to put herself forth on a fool’s errand.

‘All reports and scans appear to show no lingering residual effects of any issue Captain.’

‘That’s a relief,’ she said softly.

Suddenly unwilling to speak to him any longer, Kirk leaned on the locked doors which lay closed to her side, moving out of reach of the intercom. Even through her suit she could feel the cold, harsh metal of the door against her back. She was so accustomed to doors sliding open at her command that she grew a little irrationally angry at this door which refused to open.

Even her own ship was acting beyond her control today.

It locked her away from Spock.

Shame rose within Kirk like a wave of nausea.

She had no right to feel this way.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Kirk said to the door and the man who lay behind it.

With superior hearing, surely the Vulcan would have been able to hear her words.

She slid down the door slowly until she was sitting on the ground, her back against the cool metal. Discomfort aside, the feeling that she was not alone was enough for Kirk to find her head begin to slump as she fell asleep against the unfamiliar cool metal of the storeroom’s sliding door.


	3. Chapter 2: Relax Captain, All is Well

‘Feeling quite comfortable, Jim?’ a voice grouched, stirring Kirk from her uncomfortable and dreamless slumber.

‘Quite entirely,’ she responded. It was Bones, the only man who dared poke the sleeping lion, or rather captain, awake from her unnatural position half slumped, half leant against the locked doors of the Botany storeroom.

‘And might I enquire what the Captain of this vessel is doing lounging around sleeping in hallways like a drunken new recruit who can’t open the door to their quarters after a celebration? Or did you want to add some chronic back pain to my list of patient’s issues?’

‘I admit that it was hardly my intention Bones. I’m afraid I succumbed to sleep the second I sat down on a flat surface. Had I awakened at all I should have returned to my quarters but I didn’t stir all night.’

There was a crackle of the intercom jolting into life.

‘I can support that assertion Doctor. I was admittedly a little concerned when the Captain stopped responding to me through the intercom but that was all resolved quite easily. Our captain is a rather loud snorer.’

Bone’s smile was all teeth and good humour. Usually so reticent to smile, Bones could always work up the ability to be visibly amused at Kirk’s expense. Her deadpan expression told him that his amusement was not shared.

‘I don’t need reminding,’ Bones said with a chuckle. ‘I can recall perfectly well from the training in the Academy. I have always marvelled at how a woman who seems so small and delicate could out-snore a chainsaw.’

Kirk stopped Bone’s jibing with a gentle punch at his arm. It had no real anger behind it, Kirk and McCoy read each other well, and knew that neither was truly annoyed by the light-hearted teasing. Bones held out a hand to pull Kirk back up into a standing position. What could have escalated into one of their famous disagreements had been diffused easily.

Kirk accepted the outstretched hand easily. She would have jumped to her feet, prepared to literally leap into action, if only every muscle in her body didn’t ache from her uncomfortable and unnatural sleeping position. She instead stood up slowly, groaning at the ache it caused. She rolled her shoulder blades feeling the heated pain melt slowly away. She stretched up high and rotated her hips, her wrists, her ankles until finally she felt a little more human. Such actions were considerably more difficult in her biohazard suit but she managed. She looked to McCoy who had been waiting for her with visible impatience. 

‘Any time, Jim. No hurry,’ the doctor said dryly.

She stepped aside gracefully allowing Bones to press the intercom in the wall.

‘Are you still here you green-blooded gremlin, or have you decided to go back to your dwelling in the forest?’

‘I am still present, Doctor. Though there is plentiful plant life in the storeroom, I shouldn’t think it falls within the parameters which define a forest.’

Bones waved a dismissive hand, a gesture that would have no benefit to the Vulcan who could not see him.

‘Whatever you say Spock.’ Bones raised the PADD that Kirk had not previously noticed he held. ‘Pedantry aside, how is my patient today? If you would be so kind to scan your vitals then we shall run though some routine tests I’m confident you can do without my aid. ‘

‘Scanning presently, Doctor,’ Spock said easily.

There was a blip noise as the results of the scan were shown on Bone’s PADD. He looked expectantly to Kirk who knew that it was time for her to leave to give the doctor and patient the privacy they required.

‘I shall go to sickbay, and make my rounds.’

Bones nodded, but didn’t look up from his PADD. He frowned as his gloved hands of his bio-suit made it trickier to use the technology than usual. Kirk left before the swearing would begin. Kirk had quickly grown accustomed to the large and unwieldy suit. Bones had not. Kirk suspected Bones would never be comfortable in the heavy bio-suit. He accepted change as easily as an ice cube accepted its new desert home. 

In the Medical Bay most of the bed bound patients were asleep. A number of nurses were bustling around quickly, efficiently performing their duties. Kirk would expect nothing less from the crew who worked under Bones’ supervision. Despite the mammoth patient workload, the medical officers on board the Enterprise were still working like a well-oiled machine. It was a testament to Bones’ organisational capabilities as well as the medical abilities of his teams.

The few patients awake were in rising and jovial spirits. Kirk spent a few hours talking and laughing to the crew, sharing stories and jokes. It was easy for her to keep morale up with winning smiles and conversations in which she was genuinely interested.

It was some hours later that Kirk’s stomach gurgled audibly. It reminded her that she had neither eaten nor drunk that day. In turn, neither would have Spock. He was still confined in the Botanical storeroom in the life sciences department.

 _Vulcans are a predominantly vegetarian culture_ , she thought. _Perhaps there are some edible plants to sustain him in the storeroom._

Kirk doubted Spock would have found her whimsical thought as humorous as she found it but it lifted her spirits a little nevertheless.

Eventually Bones returned to the Sickbay and he and the nurses wasted no time in attending to the business at hand as efficiently as possible with only the most minimal of complaining. The complaining was not that they were in desperate need of a break, or running short in supplies. Bones’ only complaint was that Kirk was in the way. When in sickbay, Kirk was always in Bones’ way.

It was only natural for Kirk to take her leave from the Sickbay and retrieve a meal once her visit had come to an end. Perhaps, under more usual circumstances, Kirk would have been more inclined to send a crew member, maybe an ensign or yeoman who had a free moment, to fetch her something to eat. That meant she wouldn’t have to leave her Captain’s duties for a minute longer than was strictly necessary. These were not usual circumstances however, and with half the crew out of action and a skeleton crew running the ship Kirk thought better of sending people away to do her bidding in such a small task.

Kirk bid her farewells to those in sickbay and went to the closest food synthesizer and selected two trays, filling them with food. The science department storerooms didn’t have food synthesizers to her knowledge, not that she had ever thought to check. Unthinkingly she allowed her feet to guide her through the endless maze of long hallways, to the still unyielding door of the Botany storeroom.

She pressed the button of the intercom.

‘Good afternoon, Spock. I hope you are still holding up well. I have fetched a little food for us.’

‘That is a very kind gesture Captain, though I’m afraid I have no way to access said food.’

Kirk blinked.

_The stress must really be getting to me._

What an oversight.

‘I… I have no real suggestion for a solution to that Spock, I apologise. I thought you might be hungry and failed to think beyond that I’m afraid.’

Kirk looked to the tray of food she held in her hands, enough there to feed two.

‘Do not berate yourself Captain. I do not require sustenance at this time.’

‘Well, that’s some relief at least. I however, greatly require sustenance and if you don’t mind, I think I shall eat in your company.’

‘Please go ahead,’ Spock said easily, his voice tinny thought the intercom.

Kirk sat down, almost exactly where she had fallen asleep last night. It was a welcome moment of silence from the loudness of the sickbay and multitude of temporary medical rooms. Not that the people had been loud per se, but it was still the noise of fifty plus people in an enclosed space. After a while it had become a tad overwhelming.

Now alone in the hall of the bay, Kirk risked taking off her protective helmet. With no one around and these halls now being seldom visited, she doubted she would be getting company any time soon.

Spock may have had difficulty accessing food, but Kirk didn’t see why she had to too.

She sat in silence and ate her food.

In that respect it was not too unlike their usual meals together. The knowledge that Spock was nearby was enough for Kirk to fall at ease more so than she could whilst alone.

Food consumed, Kirk had the rest of her daily duties to perform. She promised Spock that she would call by later and told him in no uncertain terms that if he felt any change in his health to alert Bones or M’Benga immediately.

He agreed easily and she was satisfied to leave him for a while longer once again.

Once Kirk’s daily duties were done it was late evening. With a vastly reduced crew, a lot more responsibility had fallen onto her shoulders. Now that Spock was unavailable, his duties had become her duties too. She had been able to delegate the science and research portion of his work to a team of competent science officers, but his lieutenant duties were considerable and only Kirk was able to perform them in his absence. Her eyes were stinging when she stood up from her captain’s chair, announcing her retirement from the bridge for the evening. Her day had been long and her workload weighty. She returned to her room with relief.

Yet Kirk hadn’t forgotten about her promise to visit Spock once her duties were done, so after a quick shower and change of clothes she picked up her chessboard and made her way to the doors of the Botany storeroom.

‘Good evening Spock,’ she said cheerily into the intercom. Perhaps she could use enthusiasm to cover up her stress and exhaustion. It was successful to her ears at the very least, though how it would sound to the superior Vulcan ears of her second in command she did not know.

‘Good evening Jim,’ Spock replied after a moment.

‘I have brought our chessboard. A little quarantine shouldn’t be enough to prevent us from our evening game, what do you say Spock?’

‘I will not be able to see the board,’ Spock said, stating the obvious.

‘I had assumed it would be mere child’s play for you to play without a visual of the board. Perhaps I overestimated your skills.’

_The best way to get a Vulcan to do what you want?_

_Go for their pride._

Kirk could play Spock like a fiddle.

‘A visual of the board will not be necessary,’ Spock said stiffly.

Kirk cracked a smile at that.

‘I expect nothing less from you Lieutenant.’

It was a closely fought match. It always was. But today, Spock was slow in his responses. Kirk wondered if it was the lack of board before him or if it truly was sickness. What should have been a fun way to lighten both their moods had done nothing but increase her worries tenfold.

A heavy sigh escaped her body.

‘Cheer up Captain,’ Spock said easily. ‘It might never happen you know.’

‘Excuse me?’ Kirk said, in surprise.

Her shock turned immediately to grave concern. To say that this was atypical behaviour would have been a gross understatement. Scotty the Chief Engineer could sprout wings from his back and do a lap around the bridge and still appear more normal than Spock’s reaction.

‘Spock what is your temperature? Tell me.’ she demanded.

There was a pause.

‘It is ninety one degrees Fahrenheit.’

‘Is that usual for a Vulcan? That’s very low.’

‘I assure you, Jim that is well within the usual Vulcan range.’

‘And your pulse is it normal too?’

Another pause.

‘It is.’

‘And you have had nothing to eat or drink for the last twenty four hours is that correct?’

‘Affirmative. I shall not suffer repercussions like hunger or dehydration for a good few hours, Jim. Bones observed my condition just three hours ago and he was content that everything was registering normally. ’

That wasn’t enough for Kirk.

‘Check your … resting heart rate, the speed of your reflex responses, your breathing, are they all normal?’

Kirk was no doctor but she tried to use every term she had ever heard from Bones over the years.

All was normal until Spock said the unthinkable.

‘Relax captain, all is well.’

‘The hell it is,’ Kirk said, riling up.

Lieutenant Spock, the man who was the textbook definition of a man with a stick up his ass was telling her to relax.

‘Have you been researching what you could have been infected with?’

Spock made a weird noise, the kind of noise that would have accompanied a shrug.

‘I’ve just been admiring all the beautiful botanical delights and enjoying the momentary lapse into peace and quiet.’

Kirk was no fool. She had seen Spock like this before. This is the Spock that ripped out her heart, tore it into a million pieces and trod on the remains. This was the Spock who smiled and laughed. It was the Spock who climbed trees and kissed people. Kissed women.

Kissed women who weren’t Kirk.

‘Have you figured out which plant you were sprayed by?’

‘No, I have not.’

‘Have you tried?’

‘I have not.’

‘Do you think it is possible that it is the same plant which affected the crew in Omicron Ceti Three?’

Spock seemed to take a moment to ponder that.

‘I believe that it is entirely plausible. Very plausible.’

Kirk sighed.

‘I’m going to fetch Bones.’


	4. Chapter 3: The Captain's Diagnosis

Leonard McCoy had spent the best part of today surrounded by the wheezing, sneezing and generally unwell population of his ship. For a federation’s Chief Medical Officer to be faced with a mysterious virus effectively locking down the ship was already unusual, the kind of thing one only read about in textbooks in the academy, but to find that on top of that the second in command of the same ship was potentially affected by a mystery plant was the icing on the cake. Or more accurately the latest fly in the ointment. Bones had almost been able to misattribute it to the worry of the captain, perhaps making a mountain out of a molehill.

After all, hadn’t every scan and check shown perfect results?

Yet the doubt lingered, James T. Kirk was a woman who had a keen sense of instinct and it had seldom led her wrong. If she said something was wrong, then by god, Bones believed it. He’d be a damn fool if he didn’t.

So as Bones dispensed check-ups and treatment throughout the ship, his mind kept returning to Spock and his condition. That made the already acerbic doctor practically unapproachable. His bedside manner was distinctly of the ‘sit down, shut up and get better’ variety. When he had grumbled that he was returning to his chambers to catch some well needed rest, no one was in any mood to persuade him to stay. It was time for the dragon to return to his cave.

So Bones lethargically trudged to his quarters wishing for nothing more than to shuck off the oppressive biohazard suit and go to sleep for the next fourteen hours to compensate for the thirty-two hours he had been awake and working. Yes, fourteen hours. Or fourteen months.

He didn’t just _want_ sleep; he needed it, yearned for it and craved it.

What he didn’t need was his captain buzzing his door urgently moments after his head touched the pillow. He knew it was her. No one else would have the audacity to bother him at this late hour and after his intensive labour. For Kirk, whilst her shifts may end, her work aboard the Enterprise never finished. Bones cursed and grumbled and groused his way to the door, he was displeased at the late night visitor but he was even more displeased knowing damn well he’d follow along with whatever she was about to ask him to do.

Kirk wasn’t the only one who gave her all to this ship and her crew.

‘Bones,’ Kirk’s voice called thought the intercom.

‘Captain,’ Bones replied, not bothering to conceal the exhaustion in his voice.

‘I don’t care how you do it; don that biohazard suit, or preventatively block off the hall to the Botany storeroom, but you have to get in there right now. I have more than an inkling about what exactly has affected our dear first officer.’

‘ _Your_ dear first officer,’ Bones groused, already climbing into his biohazard suit. ‘The medical bay’s pain in the ass. Acting all high and mighty then causing more issues than the ensigns. I’ll throttle him.’

Bones pressed the button letting the doors to his quarters open. Kirk waited by the door impatiently.

He quirked an eyebrow and scowled.

 _Well, what are you waiting for?_ It seemed to imply. _Lead the damn way._

Kirk was an old hand at reading Bones, and she decided to delay no further. She turned and began to walk away. Bones grumbled under his breath as he begrudgingly followed his captain, biohazard suit once more on. Bones wasn’t the claustrophobic sort, but this whole ordeal might just change that opinion.

‘If this is what I suspect it to be, then it isn’t contagious,’ Kirk said as they walked to the Science department.

‘Ah and when did you make your diagnosis, doctor?’ Bones asked somewhat sardonically.

‘I think it’s that plant that affected so many of us during our mooring on Omicron Ceti III.’

‘Is that what you _suspect_?’ He sounded doubtful.

‘It is. Though I could not identify the plant, I thought perhaps you may be able to. If it proves to be the case then it is safe for Spock to leave and we know now how it can be reversed.’

Bones remembered Kirk regaling him of the fight between the human and Vulcan. Kirk told the tale with some humour but Bones had failed to see what was so amusing about the close to death situation she had found herself in. Correction, the close to death situation she had brought upon herself in her never-ending crusade to save the ship and protect its crew. Had he not come to his senses in time, Spock would have killed Kirk. Bones was in no hurry to rile the Vulcan. He might have had the same loyalty as Kirk but he had a damn sight more self-preservation than the woman practically marching him to the Botany storeroom.

‘Well, I can take a look, though if Spock has been in the storeroom with some hours to kill why didn’t he look at the damned plant himself? He’d have more than enough equipment to say definitively.’

Kirk stilled her steps, and turned to Bones who still trailed a little distance behind.

‘He _didn’t feel like it_.’

Bones looked at her uncomprehendingly. He blinked.

‘What are we dilly-dallying for? Come on Kirk,’ Bones said, his steps speeding up considerably.

Suddenly Kirk’s diagnosis seemed a lot more plausible.

As they approached the storeroom, Bones held a hand out.

‘You stay here, I’ll have to open the doors and just in case you’re not correct, I’d rather you stay back here and not get infected.’

‘Doctor,’ she said with a nod, stilling her steps. She was in her suit too but she was in no position to argue. She wanted Bones to look at Spock as soon as possible. Her protestations were a dalliance she could not afford.

Bones walked into the hallway whilst Kirk lingered back. She heard the familiar sound of doors sliding open. Such a sound awoke both relief and anxiety within her. She paced, short, stiff strides around the hallway just before the Botany storeroom’s hallway. Her breath was tight in her chest and a little too fast. She forced it to calm down, lest she steam up her suit.

 _What would be worse_ , she pondered. _That this could be the pollen which affected Spock in Omicron Ceti III, or that it might not be? If it isn’t then what has affected him so?_

It would be a considerable amount of effort to research _yet another_ mystery illness aboard the ship and Kirk could already see the medical team were pushed to their limit.

Judging by the dark circles under Bones’ eyes and the slow, trudging footsteps he had been taking, Kirk suspected that the ships Chief Medical Officer had been bearing more than his fair share of work. If he was already being crushed by one sickness, what chaos could a second bring?

Kirk sighed and leaned her head against the wall, not caring how the oils on her skin smudged on the clear portion of her face guard as she pressed her face to it. She stood like that, until she heard the sliding of the store’s doors once again.

She straightened up with a new burst of energy, and she had to hold the wall to physically prevent her feet from leading her into the next hallway as curiosity and apprehension overwhelmed her.

She could hear Bones talking to Spock. Though when Spock replied, his answer came after a familiar ‘beep’ by way of announcement.

The intercom.

_Why is he still in the storeroom?_

Letting her heart overrule common sense, Kirk walked forwards into the next hallway.

She was greeted by the scowling face of Bones, who was standing at the intercom just as she had suspected.

‘Kirk, you’re just in time. Help me knock some sense into this Vulcan skull of his. Perhaps it’s the Vulcan physiology to be a hard headed mule, or perhaps it’s a trait special to our First Officer. I wouldn’t doubt that he’s just a unique case.’

‘What is the matter, Bones?’

‘Your second in command here is insistent that he is fine in the Botanical storeroom and is happy to stay there for the time being. Apparently the sickbay is secondary to a damn greenhouse.’

‘Is that true, Spock?’ Kirk asked into the intercom. Of course, he would have been listening.

‘It is, Captain.’

‘I must insist you follow the doctor’s orders and go to the medical bay, Spock.’

‘And I am afraid I must decline that order, Captain,’ was the nonplussed reply.

Kirk ground her teeth, displeased.

‘That was not a suggestion, Spock. If Bones here says that you can leave, then it must be safe to do so. I insist you leave this room immediately. This is not the time for games.’

There was a moment of silence. The door slowly slid open.

There stood Spock who seemed no worse for the wear, barely affected by the two days of isolation in quarantine. He had forgone his torn biohazard suit and appeared thoroughly unconcerned by that fact. Without the suit, Kirk could take in his appearance fully.

Despite Spock’s nonchalance, Kirk rushed to his side, inspecting him carefully.

‘Has Bones’ checked your temperature? You look pale, Spock.’

She turned to Bones.

‘Doesn’t he look pale?’

‘He doesn’t look pale. He looks green. A green blooded hobgoblin, like he always looks,’ Bones grumbled. He was thoroughly unamused at Spock’s reticence at leaving, wasting more and more of his precious time off.

Spock smiled at Bone’s grousing and Bones actually took a step back in discomfort. Spock couldn’t have shocked him more if he’d pulled out a pair of tap shoes and performed a finely choreographed dance routine.

‘We gotta get him down to the sickbay, now,’ Bones murmured.

Kirk didn’t notice Bones’ discomfort, still observing Spock, still insistent that he check his temperature once again. When he didn’t move with enough urgency, Kirk physically took Spock’s hand and placed it to his forehead.

‘Well?’ she asked expectantly.

When his reply wasn’t swift enough she moved his hand and replaced it with her own. Even through the thick gloves of her suit the heat from his body seeped through. The bulb of panic in the pit of her stomach bloomed.

‘Bones, he’s warm. He’s burning up,’ Kirk said urgently.

Bones was no stranger to Kirk presuming her medical knowledge was greater than it was and he was certainly never one to spend a lot of his attention on Mr Spock but Bones was a doctor and so he scanned him once more.

‘His temperature is normal, Jim,’ Bones said, almost soothingly. ‘You however, need some sleep. You’re exhausted and you’re losing perspective. You’re panicking too much. You’re going to the sickbay with Spock and me. But let’s get him a new suit first.’

With the new suit acquired for Spock, Bones frog-marched the captain and the first officer to the sickbay. When they arrived it was quiet. Night-time had exhausted both the nurses and the patients. Kirk could see the familiar form of Nurse Chapel walking around the room softly, keeping everything running with her usual efficiency. Bones guided Kirk and Spock into his office.

Kirk hadn’t been conscious of it, but the only time she had eaten in the last two days was her meal with Spock. And even then she had merely picked at her food, in no appetite to feast. She hadn’t drunk since then either. She was light headed and getting a little dizzy. She had the beginnings of a headache, one hell of one too. 

Determined to assert herself she straightened her back and looked Bones in the eye.

‘I’m fine’, she said firmly.

Bones did not break eye contact, rising to her implied challenge. He scanned her, just as he had scanned Spock detecting the exhaustion and dehydration he knew that he would find. His expression was practically thunderous when the toll of her last few days of neglect became revealed. 

‘With the whole crew recovering two more won’t make much difference, is that what you thought? When was the last time you ate, slept or drank something? Stopped a moment to catch your damn breath? Jim, you’re too reckless.’

Kirk set her mouth into a line and said nothing.

Bones knew when he’d won.

‘I have one request,’ she said eventually.

‘That’s presumptive of you Captain,’ Bones said. Though his words were harsh, they were just automatic, with no real venom in his voice.

‘Let me go back to my cabin. I don’t want the crew to see their Captain being treated for exhaustion.’

Bones looked at her for a moment.

‘Fine,’ he said.

Kirk stood up stiffly and left sickbay.

\---

Approaching the Captain’s chambers, Kirk’s mind was filled with thoughts of impending hypos and mandatory bed rest for the next twelve hours at least, and not on the present company, trailing behind her, probably gearing up to give her another lecture on not running herself into the ground.

They were bold words coming from the man who looked like he hadn’t slept properly in a week either.

When Kirk opened the doors to her room and practically lumbered through them, she finally realised that the merry duo hadn’t been composed of her and Bones as she had thought. It was Spock trailing behind her easily. A shadow she hadn’t expected.

‘Bones said he’d be there in a moment, Jim,’ Spock said. ‘He said he had to prepare a few supplies.’

Kirk looked at Spock a little blankly, unsure of how to get rid of him, or at least get him to return to the sickbay.

‘Take a seat, Spock,’ she said eventually. Bones would probably take Spock with him once he had dealt with Kirk. ‘I’m sure Bones will be here soon.’

Kirk retired to her small private bathroom and tried to decide how much effort she was willing to make before going to bed like Bones had ordered. Exhaustion had really begun to set in and Kirk’s head was killing her.

_How long have I had this headache?_

It felt like forever.

She needed to shower, the bio-suit had made her sweat much more than her usual run of the mill shift and that was before considering that she had worked for hours longer than she usually did and run half the length of the ship to get to the sickbay in her panic about Spock.

She would brush her short hair, wash her face, and brush her teeth. That was her checklist for the evenings when she couldn’t expend more effort than she needed to.

On nights she had nothing extra to give, she’d fall face first onto her bed, to hell with the routine.

After brushing her teeth, wrestling a little with her hair, and half-heartedly wiping a cool cloth around her face Kirk stepped out of the bathroom. She decided to just throw off her her gold shirt and pants to join the biohazard suit and crawl into bed. She’d shower in the morning. Kirk wrestled her bra off from under her federation issue vest undershirt. It joined its companions, lazily discarded on the floor. She would deal with them in the morning. She had plenty of spare uniforms to choose from. One crumpled uniform was not the end of the world.

She crawled onto her bed and threw the covers over her face hoping the darkness would be help her headache.

It didn’t.

‘Would you wish for me to darken the room Captain?’ A voice asked easily from the other side of the room.

Kirk nearly jumped eight feet in the air.

She had forgotten Spock was still in the room.

She should have been embarrassed that she had just taken off her pants in front of him, disrobing exhaustedly, completely unaware of his presence. However, Kirk and Spock had been in many scrapes over the years and if seeing Kirk's legs and underwear offended Spock then he would have been horrified by the other things he’d seen.

Decency went out the window very easily when in a life and death situation.

‘If you would be so kind, Spock,’ Kirk replied eventually.

The lights faded and Kirk could bask in blissful silence for a moment or two. She couldn’t fall asleep easily because of the trepanning sensation in her skull and the major road construction noises going on in her head. But the silence helped, even if the dark didn’t have the full effect she had hoped it would.

All too soon the delicate silence was broken by Bones clanging into the room with a tray full of all he had deemed necessary to administer to Kirk. From the rattling of the tray she suspected he had brought the necessities, the welcome additions and the plentiful extras that he would administer as punishment for her bothering him during his downtime. She sat up blearily and let him do his worst without complaint.

Soon there had been two hypos discharged in Kirk’s neck, one in the outside of her arm and one in her thigh. Thankfully, her headache was fading because she felt more poked and prodded than a hedgehog’s pincushion.

Still Bones left a jug of water, three hypos and the firm instruction that the hypos would need to be self-administered over the next few hours. The water would be drunk in the next four hours or on Kirk’s head be it.

Then surprisingly Bones left the same for Spock.

‘There’s no room in the sickbay for you, Spock. We’re running on fumes down there. Not even a bed to spare. You two patients will have to look after each other. After all, your rooms are close. You can just set an alarm for each dosage, Jim. If you don’t mind, I’m going to spend the next three hours trying to get as much sleep as I can. Thanks for that by the way, much appreciated.’

The exhausted and withering look Kirk received from Bones left it thoroughly obvious Bone’s opinion on such matters. She thought better of speaking back and so she let the surly doctor seethe as much as he liked as he stomped back to his quarters.

That left Kirk with three hypos, two jugs of water and the heavy prospect of having to wake up every three hours to drink her fill of water and stab her own neck with the accursed hypo. 

‘Spock, you wouldn’t be willing to administer the hypos on my behalf when the time comes?’

‘If you wish Jim,’ Spock said easily.

Having received essentially the same instruction from the ship’s doctor, Spock appeared remarkably less beleaguered about the upcoming self-treatment. Notably, he also appeared entirely content to remain in Kirk’s room.

‘If you’re going to linger Mr Spock, you could at least make yourself comfortable,’ Kirk sighed. Even if the Vulcan remained, she would not be kept from her slumber. Hypnos had his heavy hold over her now, her body weighty, her thoughts slow, her eyes stinging. It wouldn’t be long until she drifted asleep.

‘I am fine where I am, Jim. There is only forty minutes until our next administration of the hypo the doctor has given us. I believe it is for our exhaustion, fatigue and dehydration.’

‘Say no more then, Spock. I shall see you in forty minutes.’

\---

Kirk woke with a violent start when the alarm buzzer went off forty minutes later. She tried to leap out of bed with purpose but her body was a betrayer. She was stiff and slow in her movements but she stood up and walked towards Spock, picking up the hypos from the tray en route. She watched him rub his eyes, a strangely human gesture she was unaccustomed to seeing on the Vulcan. He stood up too, although less stiffly than Kirk had.

‘Have at thee,’ Kirk quipped, her voice a little huskier than usual due to her exhaustion.

Spock administered the hypo expertly, although a little less effortlessly than Bones. The sting of the hypo taking effect was present due to his less experienced technique.

‘I am capable of administering this dose myself, Jim,’ Spock said.

Kirk didn’t stop him.

Kirk saw Spock blink as he administered it. He had probably felt the sting too, though he said nothing.

‘Were you asleep too Spock?’ Kirk asked.

‘I was in a light meditation,’ Spock corrected.

‘Well, I’m sure that was supremely enjoyable,’ Kirk said with a smile. ‘How about you forgo the mediation and just join me in bed and sleep until the next dosage? If I bring the tray over, it’ll be quicker and we can get back to sleep easier.’

It was an odd suggestion, coloured by Kirk’s still somewhat slightly drowsy state but Spock must have had enough of the hard chair he had been dozing on. He climbed onto Kirk’s small bed. It was barely suited to fit her, let alone a lanky Vulcan man too but if she was stuck with Spock in her room, him not seeing fit to leave, then she would at least ensure he was comfortable.

Kirk picked up a jug of water, forgoing a glass and drinking from it straight. She tilted her head back, slowly downing one, and then the other. It was a lot of fluids in one sitting, but she wanted to get it over with.

‘Efficient,’ Spock said with bemusement.

‘Extremely Spock. Now, to bed,’ she smirked, clambering into bed, shuffling over to make as much room for Spock as she could. Whilst Spock didn’t take advantage of the covers, Kirk did. It didn’t take long for them to both arrange themselves comfortably.

In the warmth of the bed, the blankets and the blazing heat of the Vulcan man beside her, Kirk was asleep again before she was aware of it.


	5. Chapter 4: The Observation Deck

The lights were still low when Kirk awakened, reluctantly opening her eyes to look around the room blearily. The glow of the digital clock by her bedside smarted and she squinted from the light. It might only have been a dim glow but in her state, Kirk may well have looked right into a blinding sun. She closed her eyes in protest, groaning lightly and then opened them again frantically when she finally registered what she had just read. The clock by her table told her it was a hell of a lot later than the one hour that she and Spock were supposed to wait before their next dosage of whatever concoction Bone’s had created in the hypos for them.

But Spock was gone and the tray of water jugs and hypos were no longer on the rattling tray beside her bed. She looked around visibly confused, though there was no one to see her slightly bewildered expression. Kirk placed a hand on the space on her bed where Spock had once lain. It was cool. He hadn’t been there in some time.

Kirk didn’t want to delay any further, lest she fall back to sleep once more. It was already far later than she would have preferred. Once she dragged herself out of bed she completed her morning stretches a little less languidly than usual, favouring swiftness over truly taking the time to relax her body fully. A sonic shower refreshed her and she dressed for the day, feeling much more human than she had the evening before.

As Kirk was shrugging on the weighty bio-suit, preparing to leave her cabin there was a familiar buzzing, heralding an imminent ship-wide announcement. As she was not the one administering the announcement, she presumed it was from the ever charming Chief Medical Officer, the only other person aboard who could do such announcements without her approval.

‘Ahem,’ came Bones’ faintly-tinny voice over the intercom.

Kirk hummed amusedly.

Kirk could sense his discomfort from that simple and awkward noise. Bones wasn’t one of public-speaking on principal.

_Couldn’t he have taken a second to clear his throat before calling the announcement?_

‘Attention all aboard the Enterprise. As of oh-seven hundred hours there will no longer be a mandatory enforcement of bio-suits aboard the ship due to the lowering of the emergency level of the … viral affliction aboard the ship. Exercise the appropriate caution and use your damn brains-‘

There was another moment of Bone’s clearing his throat, and regaining professionalism.

‘Crew members are advised to maintain the infectious disease protocol. Those in quarantine, remain in your rooms. Any crew member confirmed to be sick, seen out of their room or the sickbay will face extreme disciplinary action. Medical teams will still require suits. Visitation to sickbay will require suits. That is all.’

The beep that followed messages made Kirk smile more.

It sounded as if Bones had been awakened specifically to make that announcement. Another interruption in his continually interrupted quest for a night’s rest.

Kirk shucked the bio-suit quickly.

 _Good riddance to that damned suit_. She thought with some vindictive glee.

It seemed like it had caused her more problems than done good. It was nice to feel the cool air conditioning on her skin as she walked the halls of the Enterprise. She had missed the freedom of being without that oppressive weight of thick protective fabric, layers upon layers of stifling insulation. It was something Kirk was less as inclined to take for granted again.

Her current destination this morning was Spock’s room. The journey down the halls of the living quarters was not a long one with Spock’s chambers being next to her own Captain’s cabin. She presumed he had returned there as soon as he could during the night but she found when she buzzed his chamber’s intercom that he was absent from his own chambers.

Curious, Kirk approached the nearest general intercom.

‘This is Captain Kirk looking for Lieutenant Spock,’ she said into the screen on the wall.

There was no immediate reply.

‘I believe he is in the Rec Room, Deck Five, Captain,’ a reply came after it became clear that Spock would not be replying.

Kirk found the voice familiar.

‘Thank you, Sulu. Nice to hear you back at your post.’

‘Pleased to be back Captain.’

_To the Rec Room then._

The ‘Rec Room’ as it was so affectionately nicknamed by many members of the ship was the crew lounge and indeed it was there Kirk found Spock. And he wasn’t alone. The Rec Room was bustling with many other members of the crew who weren’t on duty, those that had remained healthy and unaffected by the virus. Kirk had expected Spock would have wished to remain in his chambers, preferring isolation as he awaited confirmation on what had affected him in the Botany storeroom, so it was a surprise to see Spock there among the small crowd. Unexpected though it was, it was not so out of the ordinary. Both Kirk and Spock’s cabins lay on Deck Five. The Rec Room was a convenient place for him to go when off duty. Perhaps then, what Kirk was truly surprised to see was the impromptu concert she seemed to have stumbled upon.

A one man – or should she say one Vulcan- show.

Spock was sitting on a chair, looking completely at ease as he strummed his Vulcan lute. He was singing peacefully and the crewmates in the Rec Room were rapt with attention. Kirk was entranced too but she daren’t step foot in the room, fearing it would break the atmosphere. This was for off-duty officers to forget about their responsibilities and formalities for a while. Her presence as Captain whether she wished it to or not would colour proceedings. So instead she lingered back; standing at the door and listened to the song that she couldn’t believe was coming from Spock’s mouth. Another voice joined in, Kirk didn’t need line of sight to tell that it was Uhura. The two of them, the human and the Vulcan sang together in such an easy natural harmony.

 _They are singing in Vulcan_ , Kirk noted. Perhaps that was where most of the enchantment lay.

The language of Vulcan had once appeared sterile to Kirk. It was succinct, it was hard to master and it suited the race who spoke it well. She had found it similar to Romulan and all too different from the languages she was familiar with on Earth. Many words were unpronounceable to the human tongue and it frustrated her just like the one man she knew who spoke it.

Then she had seen Vulcan in its written from as she had flicked lazily through a book in Spock's library. The delicate, carefully formed lettering had reminded her of music with long lines, dots and dashes placed along its central staff. It was an artful script and she had found herself entirely jealous of the creatures lucky enough to look at the sheet before her and find a message, words, something comprehensible and not just a beautiful array of brushstrokes. That book had been an epiphany for it was then she realised that the Vulcan language was most beautiful when it was sung, when it was spoken as poetry, when it was written down as sincere thoughts. It was a beautiful language meant to convey what its reserved speakers could not.

The atmosphere in the Rec Room confirmed that to Kirk from where she stood outside. To hear Spock speaking in his mother tongue was a treat, but to hear him sing was like a sacred gift.

Would Spock be offended if Kirk found his voice utterly _fascinating_?

Because she did.

It was good by human standards, though perhaps not as developed or strong a singing voice as Uhura’s. It had a low timbre and his voice, already often deep, sounded softer and mellifluous in song. It reminded her of his quiet voice last night, heavy with sleep and a little deeper than usual. She could listen forever. She wished he would speak Vulcan forever.

She wished that he would speak to her in Vulcan.

Kirk knew that even though Spock could talk to Uhura any time he wanted in his mother tongue, he usually preferred to maintain all conversations in Standard. Kirk’s first language was Standard and so she couldn’t imagine having to speak another language all the time. It was sad that she found listening to him enveloped in his native language an unusual occurrence.

 _Didn’t one miss one's mother tongue?_ She wondered. _After a while even the hardiest of person would feel a little homesick, surely._

The song drew to an end and the room erupted with the cheers of the off-duty officers who had been enjoying the performance. Uhura, accepted the applause with a theatrical bow. Spock lowered his head in a subtler bow, acknowledging the applause.

Uhura turned to Spock with a smile to murmur something to him softly. He replied easily and Kirk, even at this distance could hear they were conversing in Vulcan. Knowing that her presence would shift the conversation back to Standard, Kirk decided that her best course of action would be to proceed to the bridge to check on things, and then go to the sickbay, with a quick detour to the mess hall to get some food along the way.

All was well on the bridge and Kirk was confident that the crew could manage well enough without her presence for the next few hours and so with her morning duties completed and a small meal eaten, she journeyed to the sickbay as she had scheduled to do, making a brief detour to her quarters to reluctantly put on her bio-suit.

\---

In the medical sickbay Kirk spent her time moving from bed to bed, interacting with the still recovering crew members. She talked to those who were conscious and enquired about the health of those who were still sleeping off the worst of their illnesses. Kirk was pleased to note that some crew members were feeling so much better that they had ventured from their bed making small strolls around the hospital room.

Chekov and another young ensign were looking better and more alert than Kirk had seen in days, which was of a considerable relief. She managed a gentle chuckle at their increasingly animated game of chess which was being shushed by a few of the more overworked of the medi-crew.

Speaking of overworked medi-crew, Bones was nowhere to be found. Pity, as next on her duties was a meeting with him.

‘I’m not too sure where Dr McCoy is,’ Nurse Chapel had said apologetically. ‘Have you checked his office? That was the last place I can recall seeing him. Though that was when he made his announcement this morning and that was hours ago now.’

‘One suggestion is as good as any other,’ Kirk had replied. ‘I shall check his office, thank you.’

Kirk entered Bone’s office, wondering if it was Interplanetary ‘Hide and Seek’ Day, and no one had thought to inform her. It felt like she had to hunt down everyone she wished to talk to today. She had considered the room empty until she heard a strange sound that alerted her attention.

A snuffling noise.

A noise that might just have been a small snore.

Sure enough, hidden beneath the mountain of paperwork that adorned his desk, Kirk found the sleeping doctor. Content for once, to let sleeping dogs lie, Kirk did not awaken Bones. Instead she allowed him to remain asleep as she stripped off the bio-suit, placing it near the door and shifted some paperwork that had over-grown the table and meandered to the chair in front of it to make some space. Then she sat down.

Now, sitting before Kirk lay a sleeping doctor and a veritable mountain of paperwork. Paperwork that she knew would have to be co-signed by the Captain of the vessel very soon. Right now in fact. With a currently unknown affliction making its way throughout the ship, proper protocols had to be followed, be it increased protection worn by the crew members, enforced quarantines for those affected and, unfortunately for Kirk, all research and findings about the affliction signed, in triplicate by both the Chief Medical Officer and the Commanding Officer. Two copies were to simply be signed on the PADD, but the third copy of research was to be signed off manually, with pen and paper.

There was something distinctly odd with the sight of a table filled high with paper aboard the USS Enterprise. It was like the future and past combined. The next thing she knew Kirk would have to take notes for her Captain’s Log with a typewriter. She found it all dreadfully old fashioned and more than a little excessive.

Kirk didn’t even have a pen aboard the Enterprise, something that would make signing off documents and reports considerably more difficult had she not been aware that Bones, the fiercely old-fashioned man that he was would certainly have a handful of pens to his name. Though Kirk kept her Captain’s Log as a voice recording, Bones kept a detailed Doctor’s Log on both voice recording and paper. Kirk wasn’t sure if it was lack of faith in technology or hard-headed stubbornness that kept him clinging to the world of pen and ink, but for once she was grateful.

Kirk reached out and pulled the pen from the hand of the sleeping Doctor. This was going to make up the rest of her workload for the day so there was no sense in delaying the inevitable. For a little while Kirk was content to sit and work through the pile of paper before her. She could see the sheets that had already been signed by Bones, who had undoubtedly made his morning announcement and proceeded to begin signing off on sheets rather than returning to his quarters for some much needed rest. However, the human body could be mutinous against one's wishes when pushed to its limits and sleep had surely overcome him.

She was unsure how much time passed when Bones finally stirred. He awoke by jerking his head up with such urgency that Kirk nearly jumped out of her skin. When he sat up blearily and noticed Kirk, who was gently smiling at his unusual awakening, he scowled. Kirk stood up and walked to the food synthesizer, fetching two coffees. One coffee was for the tired and overworked Doctor and one coffee was for the tired and overworked Captain.

‘Good afternoon, Bones,’ she said.

‘How the hell do you expect me to drink this coffee?’ was Bones’ reply.

‘Ah, the milk, sorry Bones it must have slipped my mind.’

Kirk fetched some milk for her acerbic companion’s coffee, content to let him grumble, stretch and shake off any lingering remains of sleep. Sure enough, a few sips of coffee and contemplative silence, Bones could almost be considered himself again.

‘Feeling better today Jim?’ he asked.

‘I am.’

‘All medicated and hydrated?’

‘Fit as a fiddle,’ she replied.

She kept the knowledge that Spock had allowed her to continue to rest whilst he administered the hypos to both her and himself during the evening. There were two reasons for that, the first being that Kirk felt oddly personal about that information, the second being that Bones may try to administer hypos to her as she was sleeping in the future.

The fact that Kirk and Spock had shared a bed wasn’t enough for Bones to raise an eyebrow. They’d been in space for a long time and stranger things had happened. Kirk and Bones had once spent the night in Chekov’s sonic shower after a night of frankly out of control celebrations. She knew that Bones would know nothing untoward had happened but Kirk didn’t want to mention it.

She didn’t want to mention Spock.

She didn’t want to open the line of questioning she was aware she was avoiding.

Unfortunately what Kirk wanted, and what Kirk got seldom aligned these days.

‘And what of Spock? How is he doing today? He had to call by for some tests.’ Bones checked the time and scowled. ‘I assume M’Benga performed the check-up.’

Bones looked to his computer, clearly looking up M’Benga’s test results and potential diagnosis.

‘He’s in the Rec Room on Deck Five, entertaining the masses.’

‘And I’m on Orion dancing in a shroud of organza and pearls.’

Kirk laughed at Bone’s disbelief.

‘I guess that’s just a part of his changing affliction, if my suspicion was correct.’

Bones scrolled through M’Benga’s notes for a moment.

‘You were right you know. Spock is in perfect health, with the exception of unusual activity in the caudate nucleus, which is consistent with the plant spores we encountered on Omicron Ceti III.’

Kirk sighed. She had suspected as much but had hoped she had been wrong.

‘We can end its effects pretty easily Jim, it’s really no cause for concern,’ Bones said sympathetically. He knew how Kirk had placed responsibility on the event squarely on her own shoulders. ‘It’s a relief really. There are plenty worse plants he could have been affected by. Spock can be back to normal within the hour.’

‘Not just yet Bones,’ Kirk said with a frown.

‘What’s wrong, Jim?’

‘Spock is… happy, at this moment in time at least. And he was happy before, when we were on the planet.’

Bones’ expression showed he didn’t understand what Kirk was trying to say.

‘I feel that we were hasty- I was hasty, in forcing Spock to no longer be affected by the pollen spores,’ Kirk admitted. ‘It was urgent and I had no other option. I understand that needs must. I did what I had to do. Spock was the only other person who could help me.’

She paused.

‘Who were we to take away Spock’s happiness?’ She said.

 _Who was I to take away Spock’s happiness?_ She meant.

Bones shrugged and pulled another pen out of his drawer. He didn’t know how to answer Kirk’s question without belying his genuine affection for Spock. He reached for a form that needed to be signed, flicking through the sheets as he thought what Kirk had said through.

‘You know Jim, this is really something you need to discuss with Spock. If you had an issue doing something without his permission before then you shouldn’t presume and do it again. Two wrongs don’t make a right. They make a mess.’

‘Ain’t that the truth,’ Kirk sighed. She rubbed her eyes heavily and nodded. ‘Simply speaking to him would be the best kind of approach, I know. But – I am not very comfortable around Spock right now.’

Bones relaxed his tense shoulders, ‘You think so too?’

Bones wasn’t used to the relaxed Spock, so wholly accepting of his human side. It was odd.

‘He’s not the Spock we know and- are irritated by,’ Bones joked.

Kirk relaxed in the knowledge that she was not alone in her worries.

She knew that she would have to talk to Spock at some point, but every time she saw him she didn’t see _Spock_ , her right hand man, she saw every possible reason why he _wasn’t_ his usual self. She pondered his every action. _Had he always sat in such a relaxed way? Did he often speak so informally? Was his posture different? Why wasn’t he responding to her in his usual way?_

It had just been Kirk’s suspicion, her intuition and little more but now that it had been confirmed, he was affected by the plant from Omicron Ceti III it was as if all her caution had been vindicated.

Spock was different and the way Kirk now regarded him was different too, whether she liked it or not.

Every look at Spock reminded her of the Vulcan when he was affected on Omicron Ceti III. The pain in her heart was palpable. Repressing it was like repressing heartburn.

Ineffective.

Kirk raised her head from the form she was currently reading, her neck stiff, when she realised that Bones had asked her a question.

‘I’m sorry Bones, could you repeat that?’

‘Should we talk to the woman Spock loved on Omicron Ceti III? Leila? After all, don’t you think she deserves to know that the Spock she loved is here once more?’

Kirk’s grip on her pen tightened, so she put it down on the table. It clicked against the table with a little more force than was necessary. It rang out, metal against wood.

‘A little early to be thinking about things like that, isn’t it Doctor?’

‘I suppose you’re right, Jim,’ Bones replied.

He detected a little frustration in the Captain’s tone. It was understandable. Kirk was frustrated that a brief second of carelessness had resulted in such an effect on a comrade. An accident like what happened to Spock, occurring under the Captain’s care was tough. Bones knew Kirk was the type to accept blame for things that were out of her control.

It was true, to an extent, the Doctor’s assumption for Kirk’s slight sharpness of tone, but her frustration was as multifaceted as the women who felt it. Kirk was frustrated that Spock had gotten infected in the first place to be sure, but she was also frustrated that she hadn’t ensured her suspicions had been confirmed sooner. She was frustrated about the unwanted feelings that arose again at the mere mention of Leila, the woman Spock had been so fond of once upon a time.

Almost a year, or perhaps more had passed since the events on Omicron Ceti III and Kirk had managed to deal with what had happened there as she dealt with many of her problems, by filing them away for future consideration then locking them up tightly under lock and key. Kirk was irritated, not by the mention of Leila’s name and the reminder of the relationship she had shared with Spock, but of the wave of anger that had arisen within her at the thought Spock might truly wish to return to the love of his life. Leila had confided in Kirk the sincerity of her feelings for the First Officer and she had made no secret her love to him as well. She had done so easily what Kirk could not. She told Spock how she felt, and Spock reciprocated in kind. Kirk had not. She had no claims on Spock. It irritated her that she wished to act as if she should.

‘I was hasty Bones, you’re correct as you so often are.’ Kirk picked up her pen once more, sighing as she calmed her emotions. ‘You’re right, you’re right. We have to talk to Spock. This is truly not up to us in the end. It is for Spock to decide. Just not the Spock we know and have grown accustomed to. I do not know how to act around his altered state but that reticence shouldn’t still me from helping him through this situation.’

‘I’m glad you feel that way, Jim,’ Bones nodded thoroughly in agreement, his head once more in a file which required signing.

‘Well, I guess there’s no time like the present,’ Kirk stood up, straightening her stiffened legs.

_Or rather there’s no point delaying the inevitable pain. I might as well rip the band-aid off quickly. Anything is better than prolonging this torture._

\---

Kirk left Bone’s office with slow and reluctant steps. Her body was burdened, no longer with the weight of the heavy bio-suit she had slung over her arm, but with heavy guilt and reluctance. The thread of envy, of possessiveness, she had over Spock was vastly overshadowed by her shame and suffering of having such an unwanted emotion.

She had hoped to pace around the ship in her hunt for Spock, and work off some of her nervous energy but it was easier to find him than she had first thought. He was standing alone in the Observation Deck. It would not have been somewhere Kirk would have suspected to find him but he was there regardless, his shoulders at ease, looking out of the ship and observing the majesty that was space.

To Kirk, the view one could find in the Observation Deck was breathtaking. One could not look out to the black nothingness, the ever extending mystery and great unknown of space and not an experience a life-changing revelation like no other. Even in a ship so large, so strong, so vivacious and filled with activity and spirit, in the Observation Deck, life was still. It was humbling. Compared to the incomprehensible vastness, everything was small. The Federation could seem so grand and important but there could be no pride here. There was nothing more impressive than space. In the occasional sentimental moment, Kirk had found the view tear inducing. It was beauty beyond compare. It was awe. It was fear. It was the desire to explore it all.

The Observation Deck reminded Kirk what the Federation’s work was all for. Then it humbled her by reminding her how inconsequential it all was against the vastness of space.

Spock had appreciated the view one could see from the walls of windows looking out to space but had seldom shared Kirk’s interest in spending time there. For the more practically inclined species, the Observation Deck served no purpose other than segueing one room to another, a many-windowed hallway. But tonight, Spock was in the Observation Deck. Another change. Another difference. 

She watched him silently for a long moment.

Kirk was a brave woman, and she had faced more life-threatening, career risking, treaty breaking and even just plain old scary, events than more people would encounter in a lifetime. But at this moment, her bravery all but deserted her and she was overcome with a wave of selfishness.

When Kirk walked to Spock’s side, he didn’t turn around. She was content to stand with him, looking out into the wondrous and infinite cosmos with the inability to comprehend it all.

It was hard to feel all powerful when looking out to the black beyond.

Right now, Kirk had never felt weaker.

Spock said nothing and so Kirk said nothing. Theirs had always been a relationship built upon comfortable silences.

Time felt like nothing as the view drew Kirk in.

‘You know what has afflicted me,’ Spock said after a long while. He did not tear his gaze away from the glass.

‘I do.’

‘And yet you have not negated the effects.’

‘Affirmative.’ She kept her eyes solidly focused on the glass. She was avoiding looking at the man by her side. She wondered if Spock was doing the same.

Silence fell again. The only reminder that they were not truly alone against the vast unease of space was the occasional footfalls of crew passing through the deck.

‘Why?’ Spock asked.

‘I shall not be the one who decides when the effects of the pollen should be reversed. It is up to you Spock to undo its effects.’

‘Do you believe that this affliction is a negative thing?’

‘I do not know,’ she said earnestly. ‘It does not kill its host. It provides perfect physical health. As long as it does not upset you Mr Spock, there is no reason to seek remedy so soon.’

‘I am unsure whether it is my own thoughts or the wish of the spores to remain this way.’

‘You’ll have the time to figure that out Mr Spock.’

Spock stood there unmoving. He may have been pondering what they had just discussed, or he may have been once again observing the blackness before him, the occasional twinkle of a star reminding him how far away the nearest plant could truly be.

‘I shall retire for the evening Jim. I have much to consider.’

‘Good night, Spock.’

Spock left and Kirk stood for some time, alone in the deck.

Sometimes Kirk didn’t need to stare into the vast expanse of space to feel powerless. Forcing her head to rule over her heart left her feeling powerless too.

\---

When Kirk finally retired for the evening, settling in bed and drifting to sleep she found her dreams haunted by visions of a wedding ceremony. Spock was the handsome groom in his Vulcan finery, ceremonial and intricate; it suited the man who wore it. Leila stood across from him in the aisle of a beautiful church, she was dressed in a Terran wedding gown. It was white and had extravagant layers of fine tulle. Spock was laughing and smiling. He was happy. He was a peace with his human half. Kirk stood in the side-lines in her full Starfleet Captain’s regalia and watched her fears be realised before her eyes. Spock held hands and kissed his wife before the eyes of everyone; his friends, his family and Kirk.

Declaring to all once and for all that he was capable of expressing love and that love would never be for her.


	6. Chapter 5: A Precarious Array of Spinning Plates

Kirk woke up, not in a cold sweat as the nights before, but in a fog of moroseness. Her mind was full enough to burst with swirling regret and dark emotions. Those thoughts were not directed at Spock, nor were they directed at Leila. Kirk truly wished they were. It was easy to hate others but it was so much easier to hate oneself. But Kirk could not allow this fog to continue. For the foreseeable future Spock would be this new, comfortable, different man. He would laugh and love and enjoy a little hubris and excess in his life. To feel this way was wrong. Kirk had to rise above it and let it affect her no longer.

She could not let it affect her work.

She could not let it affect her relationship with Spock.

Kirk forced herself to stand up, shower and leave her room quickly so as not to linger further in her gloom. She had made her morning exercises much more intensive than usual, as if she could soothe her mind by exhausting her body. To her pleasure, it worked to an extent.

Ready for the day Kirk made her way to the mess hall and ate her breakfast with Scotty and Bones. She was pleased to note the increased number of crew members who were back to work. Her spirits were rising and with each ‘morning captain!’ her cloudiness continued to lift. Being alone had soured her mood and caused her thoughts to spiral. Like standing alone, gazing out of the observation deck, it was so easy for the darkness to consume her but now in the morning with the bright fluorescent light of the mess hall, her friends and her associates sharing a meal, cracking jokes and telling amusing anecdotes, Kirk’s mood was rising even further.

Once on the bridge, Kirk had a bounce in her step. A smile grew upon her face when she saw Sulu and Chekov back at their stations having been dismissed from the Sickbay and deemed healthy enough to return to duty. Uhura grinned back at her jovial captain. Uhura, much like Kirk, had been lucky enough to remain sickness free throughout the whole rapidly spreading virus catastrophe. Her constant presence on the bridge had been an anchor for Kirk.

‘Good morning Uhura, anything to report?’ Kirk asked as she took her seat in the Captain’s chair.

‘Not much new to report, Captain, but I registered something right on the very edge of our ship’s scanners. It’s so far on our periphery that we can’t identify it any time soon but I think it was worth drawing your attention to.’

‘You’re correct for reporting it. Thank you. Keep an eye on it, all we need right now is an attack when the ship is so vulnerable.’

‘Indeed, Captain.’

‘Could it be a Federation aid ship?’ Kirk posited to Uhura.

‘It could be, Captain. If it’s a ship, it’s a small one but we’ve been broadcasting code 710 in accordance to Federation regulation. If it is one of ours they should know not to approach.’

Code 710 was the quarantine code, warning federation ships not to approach a potential plague ship.

 _Stay away at all costs_ , the broadcast would warn.

‘It announces our weakness to any unsavoury ships in the area too, Lieutenant. Alert me if there is anything even vaguely suspicious. I trust your instincts.’

Uhura nodded, turning back to her console.

‘No Spock this morning, Captain?’ Chekov asked innocently.

‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Kirk replied. ‘Bones suggested he take a little time off. He offered no disagreements.’

‘He really is different then,’ Chekov quipped.

Kirk chuckled, ‘it appears so, Ensign.’

In the command chair, Kirk found she had a relieving sense of being in control. With everything going wrong, Kirk was profoundly relieved to have a sense of predictability, where she knew what was expected of her and her crew. Nothing unusual was to be found on the bridge. Even with Spock’s absence, things were returning to something that felt distinctly like normality.

The ship had a course set for a Starbase that was still around five days away, not that they would be allowed access to dock there until they were no longer in a quarantine state. Regardless, being in the vicinity of a Starbase meant easier access to tools and medical supplies should the medical officers find they need them. The USS Enterprise was a speedy vessel and it could have reached the Starbase in a much shorter time, but Bones had requested they didn’t hurry to give the medical officers the best opportunity to heal the crew as much as possible. Kirk had indulged his request and because of this Sulu and Chekov were ensuring the Enterprise travelled at an almost leisurely warp one.

Kirk suspected that the cantankerous CMO was worried that when they arrived at the Starbase, superior officers down on the base would insist upon taking over care of the patients. Bones had handled this illness from its beginning stages. He’d be damned if he didn’t at least get the opportunity to see it out to the end. No one had died under his care from the virus, and Kirk was sure that Bones wouldn’t let it happen. 

\---

‘Any update on the blip at the periphery on the sensors, Lieutenant?’ Kirk asked Uhura as she stood up from the Captain’s chair, beginning to make her preparations to end her shift. She had spent ten hours on the Bridge for her usual shift and another twelve as a replacement for Spock’s duties. In that time Urura had ended her shift, enjoyed her time off duty and returned to her post.

Her answer, though it was twenty-two hours later remained the same.

‘Whatever it is, its path is steady and constant. It’s always just on the edge of our sensors. It appears it can travel with direction. So we’ve ruled out an asteroid or debris.’

‘Do you have any suspicions Lieutenant?’

‘I don’t wish to propose any theories just yet, Captain. But if I were a gambler my money would be on it being a ship of some sort, probably small and it’s following us with purpose.’

‘Thank you, Lieutenant. Please have whoever is relieving you to keep aware of any changes.’

‘Xing will be taking over at six am, Captain. He’ll be informed of the situation.’

‘Excellent.’

Kirk walked towards the elevators. Her work on the bridge was done for the day. Despite her extended hours working, she would gladly have stayed there longer. Even if her body ached in protest.

The blip on the sensor bothered her. 

Kirk had been having such bad luck lately that it was probably a cleverly disguised Klingon Fleet prepared for destruction, or a rebel Romulan Ship wishing vengeance or even a band of Cardassians with a bone to pick. Whatever it was, it had added more chaos to the already chaotic ship and had become another plate for Kirk to spin in her increasingly precarious array.

Kirk returned to her quarters, ate some food retrieved from her synthesiser, though a light meal was all she could stomach, and went straight to bed. She forwent any leisure activities she would normally indulge in. She had to wrestle with the laces of her shoes to even untie them as her usual coordination had been replaced with clumsy sleepy movements and weakened fingers. She was exhausted. Relaxation would have to wait. Kirk needed rest. 

Her workload would be this heavy for the foreseeable future. 

Kirk hoped that Spock would return to active duty soon, or at the very least would offer up a suitable replacement until then, just as she hoped Scotty’s workload would also lighten in the Engineering Bay as the crew began to return to health and to work. It would be useful if Scotty could spare the time to come up to the bridge and offer a little help. It was be sorely needed.

_Why do I suspect neither will happen any time soon?_

Kirk pondered it no longer as she quickly fell into a deep and heavy sleep.

Five hours later Kirk was awakened by her alarm beeping her insistently into consciousness. She jumped to action, if a little less enthusiastically than normal. She robotically brushed her teeth, showered and brushed her hair, styling her short hair into the neat style she often preferred. If her hair was under control then she could keep everything else under control. It was the first step to a successful day’s work.

Her clean uniform felt crisp and refreshing against her skin still a little warm from the shower. It was, all things considered, a nice way to start the day. Kirk’s mood was higher than it had been in days. She had been too exhausted to dream. And if she were too exhausted to dream, she was too exhausted for nightmares.

After grabbing a little coffee and some oatmeal, Kirk was ready for work. Her first job of the day was to visit Bones for an update on the recovering crew’s health. Even the bulky bio-suit she was required to once more don to visit the sickbay didn’t affect her mood.

Nurse Chapel met Kirk as she entered the sickbay.

‘Good morning Captain!’ She said with a smile.

‘Morning,’ Kirk replied.

‘Are you looking for Doctor McCoy?’

‘Yes I am.’

‘He’s in the examination room right now.’

‘Ah, that’s not a problem. I can wait until he’s finished.’

There were plenty of crew members lying in the beds nearby that she could talk to. Most of the crew in Sickbay were recovering well and mostly eager to return to their usual duties. Kirk had kept abreast of their improvements and recovery as best she could with the limited time she allocated to her daily visitations.

‘Lieutenant Scott will be pleased to hear that,’ she joked to a party of restless engineering officers. ‘I can already see the list of repairs required growing hour by hour.’

The engineers laughed. They knew it was true. Another officer chimed in with an anecdote from the Engineering bay that was sure to have the officers in stitches. 

‘-report back for another check-up in forty-eight hours, you hear?’ a familiar southern drawl stirred Kirk from her chatting.

‘I do hear, Doctor. Any loss of hearing would have been picked up on a scan by now, unless the scanner is defective.’

‘It’s a turn of phrase you-’ Bones seemed to reign in his frustration. ‘I’ll see you in two days Spock.’

‘Affirmative, Doctor,’ Spock replied.

Kirk couldn’t help but feel her back tense a little when she realised who Bones’ patient had been. As Spock walked past her he smiled lazily, greeting her with an informal, ‘Jim.’

‘Spock,’ Kirk responded automatically. He clapped her on the shoulder and walked away. Her eyes widened, filled with incredulity at the action. Kirk may have finally lost control of her faculties but she could have sworn that she heard him whistling as he walked through the doors of the sickbay.

She couldn’t resist touching her shoulder where Spock had just so familiarly touched her.

Bones shared her expression and a moment of absolute confusion passed between the Captain and Chief Medical Officer.

‘May I presume there has been no change then, Doctor?’ Kirk asked drolly.

‘Why, other than a sunny disposition on a Vulcan? No changes at all.’ He shivered theatrically and Kirk chuckled.

‘Perhaps we should move to more solid ground and discuss this virus spreading on the ship?’

‘An excellent idea, Captain. Come to my office and I can give you my daily update.’

‘Lead the way, Doctor.’

The report was as Kirk expected. Much was the same and little had changed so she did not linger long in the CMO’s Office. It was the first of her many duties of the day and she slipped into her usual routine as easily as she donned her captain’s shirt daily. It had been almost a week since Spock had last been at his post and whilst it was a little unusual to find no Spock on the bridge, the day passed more normally than if he had been there, of that Kirk was sure.

Last she had heard Spock had taken to assisting Sulu a little in the Botany section of the ship with some of the plants which had grown neglected since the influx of illness. That didn’t seem too outside Spock’s usual interests and behaviours, so Kirk found it assuaged a little more of her concern.

Ending her shift approximately thirteen hours later than she had intended, Kirk’s body was stiff and screaming for movement. Heavy was the head that wore the crown, but sore was the posterior that helmed the ship. She needed to work out some of her tensed muscles. Kirk often received plenty of exercise when disentangling from a deadly encounter on a seemingly docile planet, or running for her life from an enemy threat. Under a ship’s quarantine and with no possibility of a landing party or exploration team leaving the ship any time soon, adventure seemed very far away for the time being. For now, there was no better place for Kirk to work up a sweat than the Ship’s Gym.

\---

A number of the security officers had filled the gym when Kirk arrived, working eagerly to get back into top condition after weeks spent in quarantine or sickbay. Kirk found she had a host of willing sparring partners for the evening. Finally, after a long day’s slog, Kirk could feel her mind relax, her brain now free of unwanted thoughts for the first time in days as she grew single-mindedly focused on her combat training.

Indeed Kirk was so focused that she didn’t even mind when one of the more muscled security members miscalculated his punch and hit her square in the face, neatly breaking her nose. His look of abject horror as blood began to stream down Kirk’s chin was priceless. Kirk smiled, and his horror deepened as blood flowed into her mouth, reddening her teeth. Kirk playfully punched the ensign’s chest to alleviate his sudden terror at having assaulted a superior officer.

‘I hope you don’t think this is the first time anyone has ever broken my nose in a fight, Ensign Abebe,’ Kirk chuckled before she spat out the blood. ‘Now let’s continue the spar. I shall be quicker on my toes this time.’

The young man’s shoulders relaxed. ‘Of course, Captain.’

Only after a fully and intensive training, when the blood had finally slowed and a thick and slow ooze, and her body was slick with sweat, did Kirk make her way to the sickbay. She could have stripped off her bloodied shirt and replaced it with the cleaner captain’s shirt she had been wearing earlier that day, but the possibility of sending Bones to an early grave was too high. She had to get her kicks somehow.

Kirk walked into Bones’ office with a swagger, a bloodied nose and what had rapidly become two black eyes. Bone’s eyes widened and then darkened as Kirk walked towards him. Kirk could already see him inhaling a breath, preparing to complain.

Kirk cut him off with a quick, ‘sparring accident.’

Bones exhaled, ‘I see.’

Perhaps she shouldn’t have attempted to scare Bones, Kirk reflected, as he chose to reset her nose manually and without the assistance of, well, any modern medicine at all.

‘That’ll teach ya,’ Bones said with no small amount of vindictiveness when Kirk hissed in pain.

‘I came as soon as it happened, Bones and it certainly wasn’t an injury of my own doing,’ Kirk justified.

‘ _Came as soon as it happened_ , my aunt Nellie,’ Bones groused dryly. ‘Tell that to the dried blood on your chin, Jim.’

Kirk shrugged and wiped the dried blood on the hem of her shirt.

‘So maybe we had to finish the round. Who’s counting?’

‘Like I need a toddler stretched up and masquerading as a captain on top of all my other issues,’ Bones rolled his eyes in exasperation. ‘Go on shoo. Get out of my office. I’ve about had enough of you today. Shoo. Shoo.’

The adrenaline of the spar and the little childish spark of enjoyment she had derived from bullying Bones had lightened Kirk’s mood significantly she allowed herself to be herded from Bone’s office without protest. Walking back to the captain’s quarters, Kirk kept the swagger in her step. She had felt alive and tangible and _in the moment_ when she was training. It was a sorely needed grounding in what appeared to be a never ending chain of oddity these days.

Kirk stripped down quickly as soon as she entered her room, throwing her clothes on the ground as she walked towards the bathroom. The shower was calling her name. Kirk was eternally thankful that the sonic waves didn’t cause pain on her tender face like the rushing power of water would. She allowed the sweat and the blood of the day to be cleansed in the shower’s waves. Once done she wrapped a towel securely around her chest and another around her short hair before she left the bathroom. She was dangerously close to humming a small tune in contentment.

She was greeted by the sight of Spock setting up the chessboard on the small table in her room.

Kirk cleared her throat and Spock looked up, wholly unconcerned that he had entered her room at an inopportune moment.

 _Well_ , Kirk supposed. _It’s good to note that despite the fact so much has changed about him, some of the old Spock still remains._

Entirely unconcerned about the half-dressed state of his captain and long-time friend, Spock inclined his head as greeting and moved his hand as if he was going to continue setting up the board for the game. But there was a second of hesitation and something flickered in his eyes. His hand stilled, his eyes flicking once more to her. He looked at her with the precise expression she had seen him make when something had alerted his interest. A dog with a bone dangled enticingly before its nose.

He stood up straight, the chess pieces on the board were jostled but Spock didn’t notice as he prowled around the table and towards Kirk. She found she was so overwhelmed at his shift in behaviour that stepping back never even occurred to her as Spock walked purposefully to her. She had been stilled in her steps across the room and suddenly Kirk was in mind of the deer startled mid-stroll by the focused gaze of the hunter.

His intense gaze was entirely focused on her face with an immense interest so unlike his normal restraint. Kirk felt blood rush… everywhere. She hoped that her face didn’t turn a too obvious shade of red, but she knew, even if it was subtle, Spock would see it.

The half-Vulcan touched her face, tilting her chin with his finger.

Too shocked to offer any deterrence from Spock’s strange and entirely out of expected attention, Kirk allowed Spock to tilt her face towards him. Kirk may well have just been on the receiving end of a phaser blast because she was stunned.

For a brief millisecond she wondered if he was going to kiss her.

_Do I wonder or do I wish?_

Still the madness passed as she finally registered what was causing Spock’s infatuated interest. Kirk’s heartbeat, that had been fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings stopped as her heart dropped to her stomach in disappointed realisation.

The pattern of bruises on Kirk’s face, blooming dark purples and pinks, shades of yellow and green, even faint spots of colour so dark it was brown, was so… fascinating. It drew Spock in intoxicatingly close.

His sense of where was appropriate to stand had adjusted, warped, since he became afflicted. He no longer felt such caution in appropriately distancing his person when standing near humans. Bones had commented upon such an issue during his check-up earlier, with a succinct, ‘Dammit Spock, if you were any closer the air couldn’t get between us.’

But even then, Spock had been over 1.023 metres away from Bones, who it appeared had a very large area which encompassed his so-called ‘personal space’. At this moment, not only was Spock less than 14.53 centimetres away from Kirk, but he was touching her face.

Her face had reddened, most likely due to the heat in of the shower but he presumed the physical contact exacerbated somewhat.

Spock was interested.

He had never seen his captain blush before. It was an unusual sight that he felt lucky to have experienced, like a botanist luxuriating in the blossoming of a rare flowering cactus. He knew it would be a fleeting physical sensation and the blush would fade soon and he wished to observe in its fullness but his eyes were always drawn back to the injuries on her face, mesmerised. He cupped her face with both hands, and she obliged, allowing him to lean in just a little closer to inspect the injuries.

 _She won’t look me in the eye,_ Spock noted. _Yet she looked so directly at me seconds ago. Something is different._

Spock didn’t ponder or ruminate. His attention fell back to Kirk’s nose and the blossoming of violent purples and reds that had surrounded it like a moth;s attention to a flame. He was powerless to look anywhere else.

 _Even to her under-eyes._ He observed, his deep brown eyes fixed on the redness below Kirk’s lighter hazel eyes. The redness, darkening in places to purples, brought out the green and yellow in the hazel. _One hit and the damage has bloomed so noticeably. And it shall take weeks to heal. She was lucky she did not burst a blood vessel in her eye._

Vulcans, when they sustained enough damage to actually bruise, bruised so minimally. Their bruises would blush the colour of foliage, darkened green, the colour of pine needles to even darker green, the chlorophyll-richness of seaweed. The Vulcan physiology would never allow for such a rainbow of colour upon the spectrum of injury. It was enticing and so easy to just reach out and trace the darkest outline of angry purple with his thumb. His large hand still cupped on Kirk’s cheek. The motion was feather-light but Kirk was still tender. The shiver of pain that rippled through Kirk’s body at the sensation tore both parties out of their reverie. Kirk took an involuntary step back and Spock allowed his hands to fall to his sides.

Kirk cradled a cheek, almost protective of her injuries.

‘I was sparring this evening in the gym,’ she hastily felt the need to explain.

Spock nodded knowingly.

‘The bruising pattern had suggested something of the sort,’ he said. ‘I was… intrigued. The range of colour in the human bruises, terran bruises are fascinating.’

 _How very Spock,_ she thought.

Kirk closed her eyes and allowed herself a brief second to believe that Spock could have looked at her with such passion had she not been covered in bruises. For one moment, with just a little shard of madness piercing her love-sick heart, Kirk could imagine that Spock found her as interesting as he found terran physiology.

But he didn’t.

Just like that, the intensity of the moment dissipated.

Kirk opened her eyes once more with a heavy sigh and walked past Spock to her drawers where she pulled out fresh underwear and clean sweats and a regulation black shirt, she threw her dirty clothes with the rest of her laundry, then returned to the bathroom to get dressed hastily.

She was dressed and normality resumed.

‘Finish setting up the chessboard, Spock,’ Kirk called. ‘Our game shall begin soon.’


	7. Chapter 6: Time Spent, Whiskey Drunk

Kirk hissed audibly when her shirt caught on her swollen nose. In her rush to get redressed, she had been too hasty, and a smarting nose which had been reset less than an hour before was her punishment. Regardless of the pain, she dressed hurriedly, shoving on her comfortable off-duty clothes. Finally she could hang up her captain’s shirt for the evening- if only metaphorically. Her real shirt had been put in the laundry.

Brushing her short, low maintenance hair, Kirk took a moment to look at the injuries she had sustained in her sparring. The bruising she sustained from a swift punch to the face had not faded, and had in fact gotten more violent as the evening progressed- just as she had hoped it would not do. At least the flushing of her cheeks from the close proximity to her lieutenant had faded.

It had faded along with the momentary delusion that his touches had meant more, implied something intimate.

Kirk knew Spock had been interested in the bruises. Of course he would be. Spock was a greatly curious man. Even in his altered state, his mind morphed into something more human by the pollen he had been affected by, Spock had referred to Kirk’s bruises as _fascinating_. It was a common descriptor from the half-vulcan and Kirk had heard him use it to describe anything from something that held his attention to something which fell out of line with his Vulcan upbringing and beliefs.

 _He would have been interested in anybody who had sustained the same injuries as I have. Spock was not… in his right mind_ , Kirk rationalised firmly.

Her hands stilling, her hairbrush now down by her side, Kirk fought down the insane thought that Spock’s gesture had been anything more than pure scientific curiosity. For one second Spock’s gentle touch of her face, the closeness of their bodies, his intense gaze, had been something special meant for Kirk and Kirk alone.

But to entertain a notion any longer would be sheer desperation.

Kirk had acknowledged a long time ago that any feelings she held for Spock were to remain securely tucked away, stored in that aching place in her heart she only allowed herself to look at when she was two thirds of a bottle deep in whiskey. It was in that section of her heart reserved for mourning. Mourning the crew she had lost, mourning the civilians who got caught in the crossfire, mourning the love she would never have reciprocated.

_In the grand scheme of things, what did love matter?_

It was those heavy, drowning and burdensome thoughts that prompted Kirk to stagger, unsteadily and with a drunken solidarity to the observation deck on the rare nights she indulged her sorrows, attempting to soak them in whatever alcohol numbed the pain. In the observation deck she would stand gazing out into space at the vast nothingness beyond the glass. She loved it and detested it at all the same time in a tangled tumbleweed of mixed emotion that she couldn’t dream of beginning to untangle in one lifetime.

Nights like that usually took place after a particularly brutal attack or calamity, where Kirk had done everything she could and it still failed to be enough. When she had given her all, ticked every box, issued every command correctly and still returned to the observation deck feeling like she had not been the victor. Sometimes she would stand gazing out into the unfathomable depth of space until tears streamed down her face and she wouldn’t know if she was mourning, or rapt with fearful awe. Bones would inevitably find her standing there, gazing into the void. There he would take her arm, like a gentleman of old, and guide her back to her room, where they would drink together in silence until there was no threat that they could do what they truly wanted to do, which was scream and yell and cause a riot until all that was left was their exhausted bodies on the ground, unable to give anymore.

When she had saved the lives of thousands, and lost the lives of hundreds, who dare harbour an unrequited love? She was ashamed that her heart still, ever mutinous against her more rational mind called out a sweet love song that would forever remain unanswered. It was guilt, rising like heavy bile in her stomach that finally helped Kirk gain control. It was a firmer grounding and she was once again in the present and no longer lost in her thoughts.

Face sombre, and feelings concealed deep down, Kirk could face Spock again.

She had something she needed to ask.

\---

When she emerged from the bathroom, Spock was sitting patiently at the table which bore the three dimensional chess board. He looked relaxed and so entirely like his usual self that Kirk’s nerves were less on edge. She walked to the food synthesiser for a sandwich and a comfortingly steaming mug of coffee, caffeine-free given the late hour.

Once sitting at the table, the game began. No conversation was needed to initiate, this was a well-known routine. Kirk was content to eat and play. It began in thought-filled silence, as their games commonly did but as time passed and the two players settled in, conversation naturally began to flow.

‘It’s unusual to see you out of your regulation uniform Spock,’ Kirk playfully noted as she picked up a pawn and placed it forward a square.

‘As I am currently on medical leave, I do not think it appropriate to wear my uniform Jim.’

Kirk nodded, a small familiar smile upon her lips.

_Of course Spock would still be a stickler for the rules even when he’s in his altered state._

‘It’s a little different from last time,’ she said as Spock completed his turn by moving a pawn in response.

‘I do not follow Jim. This is a standard movement in the gambit I am playing.’

‘Ah, I do not refer to the game Spock. I was just- thinking aloud.’

Kirk decided there was no point in playing coy, nor beating around the bush.

She was curious.

‘You are here, in my room Spock. You are playing chess with me, and spending your Thursday evening the same way you have spent almost every Thursday evening since our five-year mission began. If I didn’t know better I would suspect there was nothing wrong with you at all. The last time you were affected by the pollen you were a lot more… self-indulgent.’

‘I believe this to be wholly self-indulgent, Jim. I am here because I find this activity enjoyable. Why wouldn’t I wish to do something I enjoyed?’

‘I’m glad to hear,’ she murmured with a small smile.

That was an understatement if ever there were one. The affirmation that their little habitude had been as enjoyable to Spock as it was to her was a joyous confirmation. She often wondered if Spock only agreed to play chess with her to avoid playing with Chekov who grew infinitely more patriotic with every Alekhine opening gambit. Her out of the box, and frankly unorthodox way of playing often flummoxed him, of that she was entirely sure, but it was relieving to know that he had enjoyed the challenge and not silently bewailed it.

Easy silence settled once again until Kirk broke it with a soft, ‘Checkmate.’

Spock let out a resounding groan that sounded all too loud in the quietness and thoughtfulness that had befallen the room.

‘This game is far too stuffy,’ he suddenly proclaimed. ‘We should play something else.’

Kirk raised a brow, feeling distinctly as if the tables had been turned on her.

‘I rather thought you only knew Vulcan games outside of chess, Spock. Or should I say Vulcan exercises. Something which would be far beyond the capacity of understanding for a simple human, I’m sure.’

Spock laughed, and Kirk tried to store it in her mind for eternity, a low chuckle of amusement, quite unremarkable had it not come from a man who seldom expressed emotion beyond the quirk of an eyebrow and a droll quip.

‘You should know you’re far beyond a simple human Jim. You are smarter than you often let on.’

‘I’m pleased you think that,’ she replied.

Spock stretched languidly, as if to release his shoulders from his time hunched before the chessboard, and Kirk tried not to ogle how his lithe frame stretched with an almost feline flexibility.

Quite unaware of the attention he had garnered Spock spoke through his stretching. ‘Perhaps we should play a different game, a game which is a battle of brawn rather than wisdom. I’m told human children enjoy rough and tumble games to develop spatial and social skills.’

Kirk found she was unable to keep up with Spock’s thinking. Spock, though he may have only been half-vulcan was still incomprehensibly stronger than her. In any duel she would be defeated immediately.

‘Do you have any games in mind?’

_Is Spock truly asking me to roughhouse with him?_

Spock shrugged so nonchalantly that Kirk suddenly realised his words had just been a flight of fancy.

 _This Spock really is so strange,_ she thought.

‘Might I suggest something a little more old fashioned, and a lot less for the human children? It involves whiskey and playing a card game until it all descends into madness?’

Spock appeared to think about it for a moment before he smiled. ‘I believe that sounds like fun, Jim.’

 _I’m screwed,_ Kirk mourned.

If the shock of Spock’s new personality didn’t kill her, then his damned smile would knock her clean dead.

\---

Three hours and too much alcohol later, Spock and Kirk were in a jolly mood. Kirk lay stretched on the floor, a position she found more comfortable that sitting on a chair when she had spent most of her day sedentary. 

‘Why are you on the floor Jim?’ Spock asked. He had remained on his chair, not a victim of bad lower lumbar support. He upended the bottle of maple whiskey directly into his mouth, visibly upset to see that nary a drop remained.

‘Do Vulcan’s never experience aching joints?’ She teased.

‘Of course,’ Spock replied drunken matter-of-factly. ‘The elders may. But they have lived through centuries when you Jim have been around for just over a quarter of a century.’

Kirk rolled her eyes at Spock’s teasing. An involuntarily peal of laughter fell from her lips when Spock lay down on the ground beside her, overwhelmed with curiosity.

‘A bed or a futon would be much more comfortable than a floor,’ he grumbled.

She closed her eyes again. ‘You should just consider it meditation.’

‘Meditation is nothing like this.’

‘Ohmmmmmmm,’ Kirk faux-chanted like the human meditation she was more familiar with. She cracked open an eye. ‘How about now?’

Spock shook his head. ‘Negative Jim.’

Kirk laughed some more and then sighed, her inebriation had reached the stage of serious contemplation. So it seemed had Spock’s. It was not easy to get a Vulcan drunk, and it would not happen on alcohol alone, but the healthy- or rather, completely unhealthy- sucrose content of the maple whiskey Kirk and Spock had drank their way through was enough to render Spock as jollily inebriated as his captain.

Both parties lay silent for a long while, content to grow lost in their own musings.

Finally Kirk could hold back no longer.

‘Do you want to contact Leila?’

The question that had lain so heavily on her mind was finally released to the air, albeit through the drunken slowness of a woman half a bottle of whiskey deep.

Spock was silent for a length of time too.

‘Why?’ he finally asked.

Kirk gestured vaguely with her hands, watching them wave in the air.

‘Well, now you’re this way. Different now, I should suppose. You could stay this way if you wanted, go back to Leila, and be happy.’

Spock didn’t answer right away, and Kirk unknowingly held her breath in anticipation. The silence continued for longer than Kirk could bear and she turned to face Spock with worried eyes.

He had fallen asleep.

Kirk sighed and allowed her head to drop back to the floor with a dull thump.

 _Typical,_ she griped.

But before she could grumble too much more about it, she had fallen asleep too.


	8. Chapter 7: The Admiralty Contributes

Kirk was unwillingly dragged back to consciousness by the screaming of sirens and the blinding flare of interrogation lights. There was a bleary moment of blind confusion and a rushing forth of adrenaline before Kirk could truly process what was happening. She hadn’t awakened to the ship crashing down around her ears, no, Kirk woke up to the standard morning alarm, lights at twenty percent, she and Spock lying on the floor where they had fallen into a drunken sleep the night before, and a hangover hand-delivered from Hades himself.

Spock too started at the noise and groaned audibly at the sound and light stimulation.

A moment of agony was shared.

‘Captain I do believe I am dying.’

‘I believe I am too Mr Spock.’

‘Might I suggest that we should skip breakfast and head to the Medical Bay?’

‘Mr Spock, I request that you don’t mention food in my presence for the present moment or I suspect I might be incredibly unwell.’

Spock appeared to be in the same boat, as he forwent answering her and instead clambered to his feet, rushed to the bathroom and wretched loudly into the toilet.

Kirk greyed. She hoped there was room in the bathroom for two. She hauled herself to her feet.

\---

Staggering into Bone’s office, eyes squinting from the blindingly bright light with steps slow and sluggish, both Kirk and Spock were herded into an examination room and given a shot or two to assist in sobering up. Kirk had expected an earful from the ever-bothered doctor but it didn’t come. Rather, he seemed all too bemused at the once in a lifetime experience of being in the room with a green around the gills, hungover half-vulcan.

Hypos administered, Kirk made her excuses. She had a shift to prepare for and she had to leave, so as not to be running late. Spock remained in the company of the ship’s CMO for a while longer. He offered no explanation as to why and Kirk did not ask for one. Though Kirk suspected he may have wished to discuss some of the effects of the pollen with Bones. Many questions still remained about his condition. It would be natural to enquire about such matters.

Spock may have appeared remarkably more human these days. He was feeling emotions and as a result, processing the world around him in a way he had probably thought he would never experience with such vibrancy again. Joy, happiness, even laughter were now within his reach. But underneath it all, Spock still remained. Kirk hadn’t the time to pry into Spock business as often as she enjoyed to do, and she suspected that even if she did, this would be a discussion Spock would rather she not be privy to.

Ego was a trait that both the human and Vulcan parts of Spock could experience in spades. To show weakness before a close friend and ally wasn’t his style. Kirk suspected she would never truly understand how Spock felt about what had happened to him. Right now, she didn’t have the opportunity to ask him. 

So instead, Kirk walked briskly to her quarters, got dressed for work and made her way to the bridge in record time.

‘Status report?’ she asked to the crew around her.

‘I’ve been monitoring the blip on the periphery of our sensors as you asked Captain,’ Uhura responded promptly. ‘Though without much update. I’ve opened channels and am trying periodically to open communications. No response so far. It appears there are no channels aboard whatever it is we have detected.’

‘Has an engineer confirmed it’s something registering on the sensors and not just a potential error?’

‘Not yet, Captain. One will be arriving as soon at they’re available. The engineering department are down a fair few crew members right now. Shall I make it an urgent request?’

‘Don’t up its priority just yet, Uhura. Treat it as a legitimate reading for now. Engineering can confirm as soon as they can.’

‘Yes, Captain,’ Uhura replied, already tapping away on her computers, hard at work.

Kirk trusted that Uhura and her fellow communication officers were keeping a close eye on the blip on the sensors, but until the engineers confirmed that this was no technical error, Kirk and her crew just had to remain cautious. With so few officers ready for active duty, Kirk had to be careful not to overwork the crew that she had available. Kirk cared for her crew as much as her ship and both physically and in terms of morale, pushing her crew to its limits was to be avoided at all costs. She had countless missions of experience in such matters under her belt.

‘Keep me in the loop, Miss Uhura,’ Kirk requested as she rose from her chair. Whilst the captain’s chair could lead to stiffness being seated all day, Kirk would have much rather remained there until the mystery of the sensor blip had been solved. Unfortunately she had other duties to perform and was expected to visit a dozen areas of the ship before lunch time.

‘Aye, Captain,’ Uhura dutifully replied.

Kirk left the bridge with the request she be informed if anything changed at all but received no update before the end of her shift. Though her shift had finished, Kirk’s duties weren’t over yet. ‘Above and beyond’ was a mantra Kirk aspired towards and she was still expected to perform further duties as Captain. But even hangover free thanks to Bones, Kirk was still exhausted from the late night’s oddity with Spock. Her responsibilities were performed with a little less of her usual fervour. She had spent hours, sitting heavily in the Sickbay sinking further into her exhaustion. She tried valiantly to stay awake but the heat of the room led to a moment or two where she began to doze. In the end, she stood, walking from bed to bed, moving from room to room and patient to patient. Keeping active meant keeping awake but it also meant exhausting herself further as the hours went on.

Bones required a meeting with the Captain that Kirk had been unable to fit in her usual shift, so she met with him in the early evening. Over a coffee Bones suggested half a dozen possible future preventative measures to avoid future viral outbreak situations and what actions could be taken if it happened again to limit the widespread sickness it could cause. Kirk knew by now that this was the kind of meeting where her presence was necessary but her input was not. Kirk was no medical professional, though Bones did not edit his medical vernacular and terminology to make his suggestions any easier to understand. Kirk could only nod in the appropriate places and murmur the occasional, ‘quite right,’ or ‘I see,’ which seemed enough to satisfy the CMO. Ultimately Kirk was handed a document on a PADD she was expected to read, fully comprehend and sign off on. Bones didn’t wait for her to ask any questions before shooing her from his office.

Normally, having a Science Officer as a Lieutenant would prove a god-send in situations like these. Kirk could defer the medical and scientific jargon-filled manifestos to Spock, who could read and comment thoughtfully and appropriately. He would fully understand what Bones was outlining, and if he didn’t, he would take the time to learn about it. Kirk would be entirely assured that the work was in a good pair of hands. But with no First-Officer and no Second-in-Command, Kirk was left alone with an intimidating amount of reading that she needed to take seriously.

Kirk opted to deal with it during dinner.

She would end up with a brain stuffed full of incomprehensible medical speak but at least her stomach would be filled in the process.

Retiring to her chamber, Kirk ate alone whilst scrolling through Bone’s proposal for future viral outbreaks. She stopped frequently to check the meaning of phrases and to break down the jargon until it was understandable to her. It took her a long time to read it thoroughly but she could not cut corners in a document like this. She signed off on it and then sent it back to Bones with a small sense of achievement.

For the rest of the evening Kirk took some time to update her log, and do some simple stretches to relax her tense body.

Even after the exercises the tension remained.

Her dreams were unsettled and her rest was unsatisfactory.

Kirk awoke the next morning thoroughly unrested, feeling like she had barely slept at all.

She showered and took a little longer than usual to make herself look presentable. She would be having a number of meetings today with Federation higher ups about the status of her crew and her ship. It was a day where Kirk would have to be on her toes and the lethargy she felt was undesirable. She prepared her coffee strong and potent. It was bitter and artificial tasting. The food synthesiser was a miracle of invention but it was still only an imitation of the true thing. It gave Kirk the energy she needed but not the flavour she desired. She left her chamber at zero five hundred hours on the dot, neat as a pin and filled with agitated dissatisfaction.

\---

‘Whether the virus should be there or not,’ an exasperated admiral pressed, ‘it should remain on the Enterprise and the Enterprise alone. There will be no landing parties and there will be no shore leave for at least a month.’

‘It’s not a question of whether or not it should be there,’ another admiral reproached. ‘It’s there, Admiral Calloway and there’s nothing we can do about it now. The Enterprise is following its virus protocol as instructed and each step is being followed accurately. You have seen the Captain’s logs and the Chief Medical Officer’s reports. What I am telling you is that we should let the ship continue on its journey to the nearest Starbase so that its crew can get access to more medical crew.’

‘To infect them too?’ Admiral Calloway blustered.

‘We have slowed our speed toward the starbase considerably. We will not arrive for another two weeks at least. And after following the Federation’s ship quarantine protocol, the crew will not be allowed off-ship until it is assured they were not a threat to anyone,’ Kirk tried diplomatically.

‘Just as the landing party weren’t a threat to the rest of your ship? Is the Enterprise so top of the line and peak of invention that a decontamination chamber is not a necessity?’

‘Post landing decontamination protocols were followed,’ Kirk replied. She bit the side of her cheek to hold back her retort at Admiral Calloway’s disrespect of her ship and her crew.

‘So it’s impervious to the steps followed?’ He theatrically exclaimed. ‘It’s a greater threat than you mentioned Kirk. Are you foolish or vindictive in downplaying the danger this sicknesses poses?’

Admiral Adrien Calloway had led the USS Vesuvius in a ten year mission to explore space unknown. In those ten years he had seemingly carved a path through only the safest routes in the galaxy. He had encountered less threat in his ten year pilgrimage than Kirk had in her first six months. A low threat exploratory mission was a safe one and Calloway had lost fewer crewmen than any ship in the Federation history. It was no surprise that he was promoted to Admiral as soon as his feet had touched down on Earth after the ten year mission ended. But Calloway had never experience a ship-wide catastrophe tougher than a sudden spread of athlete’s foot and no crisis more urgent than the Vesuvius running out of top shelf whiskey.

 _How dare he lecture me about the foolishness of the Enterprise’s actions when if he were in my shoes he’d be more out of his depth than a sehlak in an Orion whorehouse?_ Kirk thought viciously. 

‘Now wait a minute-’ an incensed Bones growled. He had been sitting in on the meeting with waves of agitation flowing from him so obviously that Kirk had felt her palms itch.

‘Doctor,’ Kirk stopped quickly, a warning for him to watch his temper. ‘Admiral Calloway, we have deemed that human error _might_ have played a factor in the introduction of this virus. It was an oversight, I’ll admit but this virus has so far claimed no lives, everyone is recovering from it well.’

‘Travelling to a Starbase means that the samples your doctors and science officers have collected throughout the whole duration of this sickness can be sent to the more fully equipped labs on the Starbase. The root of the illness could be found,’ the more diplomatic Admiral Xuur added.

A Rhaandarite, tall and androgynous, the only thing which identified Admiral Xuur to be the female of her species was the small black and silver disc that denoted her sex. It was practically impossible to tell the age of a Rhaandarite just from looking, and their lifespans were vastly greater than that of a human. That was perhaps why Admiral Xuur had broken from the association of her race to rise through the ranks to become Admiral. It was often presumed that the Rhaandarite’s were born to follow orders and not give them and given the small number of them that left their home planet and joined Starfleet there hadn’t been many cases to disprove that. Her greater years a member of Starfleet led to her keeping her emotions more in check when meeting with Kirk and the other members of the admiralty.

‘It is worth noting that the Enterprise has its own research team working vigilantly towards identifying exactly what may have happened to let the virus on the ship in the first place and working towards developing an antibody and vaccine,’ Kirk replied.

Admiral Xuur nodded approvingly. Calloway snorted audibly.

Kirk ground her teeth but it wasn’t her own bruised ego she had to deal with.

‘Our science and medical officers are more than capable of remedying this situation without assistance given the time. I resent the implication that it was our incompetence bestowed the virus upon ourselves.’

‘Well you’ll have another month to work on it now,’ Admiral Maxin, a more youthful human Admiral added.

Maxin was a fan of Calloway’s and seldom offered opposition to him. He couldn’t help but side with the older human, in some odd attempt at flattery. Kirk had known that she’d emerge from the meeting as a loser when she saw their faces pop up on the screen in the meeting room.

Maxin’s last statement only added fuel to Bone’s fire.

‘Now listen here you foul lit-‘

‘- I thank you all for your advice today. Expect my report soon. I do have very pressing matters to attend to,’ Kirk rushed, ending the call, more than eager to end that interrogation and degradation masquerading as a conversation.

It took forty minutes to calm Bones down. Forty minutes, two cups of coffee and the promise of whiskey when Kirk ended her shift later that day.

Unluckily for Kirk, her shift ended up being far longer than she bargained for when a so called ‘minor explosion’ in engineering meant that Scotty could not take over her shift when it was supposed to end. So Kirk was forced to remain on the bridge for hours longer than she had intended.

Unwilling to waste her time, twiddling her thumbs and spinning idly in the captain’s chair as the Enterprise travelled leisurely to a destination they would be unable to dock at for another month, Kirk instead took the opportunity to visit the science department to get an update on their work into creating an antibody or vaccine for this virus lingering on the ship.

\---

The bustle of activity in the science department showed that Kirk was not the first visitor in the labs today. It appeared everyone’s favourite surly and acerbic CMO had paid a visit earlier to complain about the assertion of the Admiralty that the Enterprise couldn’t solve their own problems.

Bone’s paraphrasing was perhaps a little inflammatory- they had not suggested the Science officers and Medical officers about the ship were incompetent but rather that they might appreciate the assistance of the teams on a Starbase, but Bones was incensed and his frustration had been shared by rest of the blue shirts who were all seemingly very hard at work.

Spock, who would usually be leader of the fray, was nowhere to be found, but Kirk was informed that he had called around earlier to see what had caused all the frenetic activity in the labs. If gossip was to believed, when Spock found out that the department was working doubly hard to find a cure for the illness that most of the crew had gotten over already, an illness that hadn’t actually killed anyone nor caused any visible lasting damage, he decided it wasn’t interesting enough to sustain his interest and had left without a second glance. It was told to her with some speculation as if it was improbable as Spock announcing that his newest hobby was yodelling, a flight of fancy practically in absurdity.

Kirk knew better.

She found it all entirely too believable.

Kirk walked from lab to lab, listening to reports and updates galore. Progress was happening, of that Kirk was sure, but the complexities were lost on her. She met Bones in laboratory number twelve. Checking the time Kirk could tell his shift had ended hours ago. He was still thoroughly riled up. A combination of bruised ego and the determination to prove the federation higher-ups wrong at an all-time high, made Bones practically pounce on Kirk when she entered the lab, wholly unexpectedly.

Bones had no time for pleasantries. He talked quickly about the progress that his team had made just that day.

‘Those toffee nosed bastards won’t know what hit them,’ he had declared with no small amount of bitterness. ‘At this rate we’ll have a vaccine before the end of the week.’

‘Amazing work, Doctor. Your officers are above and beyond as usual.’

Bones took that as an opportunity to run Kirk through the processes his team had undertaken. So involved in the project he didn’t entirely notice that most of the conversation was flying over Kirk’s head. Or perhaps he didn’t care. Although, Kirk had years of experience pretending that she understood Bone’s medical rants. She nodded in the appropriate places, asked for clarification at the correct time, and ultimately understood very little beyond the basics.

‘I suspect then our evening drink will have to be put on hold, Bones?’ Kirk asked before she left the lab.

‘I’ll keep a bottle of whiskey to the side to celebrate our creation of the vaccine.’

Bones would much rather spend all evening with his head in a PADD, wracking his brain to prove those who thought they knew best wrong. Alcohol was no match against the possibility of revenge.

 _Was the good old southern gentleman a vindictive breed or was Bones the exception to the rule?_ Kirk mused as she meandered down to engineering to check out the impact of the small explosion that had happened earlier that day.

It turned out ‘small’ was a heavily relative term to the engineers aboard the Enterprise. What they regarded as small, Kirk regarded as significant. The blackened metal and occasional piece of shrapnel embedded in the walls in the workshop didn’t seem particularly small to her.

Scotty, who was helping clear up by sweeping the floor with a broom, was in a great mood despite the fact that he had lost an eyebrow and a large chunk of hair in the explosion. He smelled like singed hair and burned cloth. But the damage appeared mostly superficial and the wide smiles and excited chatter that filled the department implied whatever the team had been attempting had been a resounding success.

To Kirk, the fact that no one needed medical attention was a resounding success and so she was content to let the engineers carry on. That was usually the best way to deal with the engineers.

Out of sight out of mind.

‘Aw Captain!’ the familiar brogue of the Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott called. ‘Come wae me and let’s see what mah team’s been workin’ on.’

‘It appears to me Scotty that the engineers have been working very hard on burning the ship to a crisp. Is my assertion correct?’

Scotty laughed giddily, hooking Kirk’s arm and taking her on a tour of what the team had been attempting to achieve.

‘Now, it all started when young officer Hardwin here was attempting to enhance the range of the ship's phasers,’ Scotty said with the tone of a Scotsman beginning to spin a yarn. Kirk could already hear this story being told over the drinking table with each retelling a little more fanciful. ‘But as you know Captain, you cannae just start on the full scale alterations. You have to start smaller. Say for example on a handheld phaser?’

Scotty revealed the phaser he had been holding in his holster, brandishing it like Excalibur victoriously pulled from the stone.

‘The standard issue phaser?’

‘She’s not so standard issue anymore Captain,’ Scotty said with a grin that was so contagious Kirk couldn’t help but return it.

‘How _non-standard issue_ is it, Mr Scott?’

‘Why I’d say it’s hyper-powered and entirely unsuitable for regular use, Captain.’

Kirk might have been tempted to ask _why_ but she had long since learned better.

The answer to such a question posed to the engineering department always had one answer.

Because they could.

‘So you have created a small scale experiment to strengthen the ships lasers, and in turn created a hyper-powered handheld phaser?’ Kirk clarified.

‘Multiple, Captain.’

His excited grin told her that replicating the phaser multiple times had been for pleasure and not for any useful experimentation.

Kirk had not expected hyper-powered phasers. But she was impressed.

‘You want a wee go Captain?’ he offered, holding the phaser out.

The offer was highly tempting but Kirk was a little vain. Scotty was missing an eyebrow and a portion of his hair had been singed away.

‘Until I’m sure that you’ve fine-tuned these… hyper powered phasers I’ll pass. I should like to keep my eyebrows.’

‘Ah, that’s a pity. Though we should have it all fine-tuned by the end of the month.’

‘Keep at it then Mr Scott,’ Kirk replied.

She hoped that the improvements to the ship’s phasers would take around a month to complete. Perhaps that one project alone would be enough to keep the department busy. Kirk dreaded to think what a group of engineers would get up to when confined to being on the ship without shore leave for an entire month.

Kirk left Engineering with more questions than answers but her eyebrows intact.

Back in her captain’s chair, Kirk logged her experiences of the day. She noted everything from the morning meeting with the admiralty which had been met with some contention from the medical and science officers to the advancement of the engineer’s phasers and even, though it was almost an afterthought, the small blip that was still on the periphery of the ship’s sensors.

‘Any update Uhura?’ Kirk asked.

‘Nothing yet Captain. It is still on the very edge of my sensors. It is moving at an equal speed to the Enterprise. All attempts to link communication are still unsuccessful despite being just in range for communication.’

‘Work hard to establish contact,’ Kirk said. ‘If it does not establish contact in the next forty-eight hours then another method will be required.’

The rest of Kirk’s shift- or more accurately the shift which had befallen to her once Scotty was unavailable- was uneventful. But as it drew to an end she was struck with the realisation that the next shift normally would have been Spock's.

Spock who Kirk hadn’t seen since the morning. It was now late night.

Time quickly lost meaning, or began to feel arbitrary when in the darkness of space, but the artificial lights had dimmed a little in the halls outside of the command room, and most of the crew were probably asleep. Spock was no longer on active duty and there was no one to replace him. Kirk still had a mountain of paperwork calling her name in Bone’s office and she decided to at least continue her shift until Sulu started his shift, early the next morning. She was exhausted but it was nothing a little too much coffee wouldn’t fix.

Kirk arrived at Bone’s office, unsurprised to see him sleeping at the desk, head literally in a book. He awoke when she entered the room but when Kirk murmured that she was there to sign paperwork he allowed his head to fall back into the book again, uncaring that it was a mediocre pillow. Kirk, coffee in hand sat at the desk, reaching for the pen and paperwork. The reading and signing of reports was slow and frankly mind-numbing work but Kirk became fully absorbed in the information she was reading. Exhaustion was no excuse for the slipping of standards and Kirk had a reputation to uphold.

Around her second hour she stood up to roll her neck and shoulders which had grown stiff. She pondered a trip to the canteen to get some coffee, despite the synthesiser in Bone’s office. It would be nice to take the opportunity to stretch her legs and give her eyes a break. Ultimately, she denied herself the treat, opting for the less enjoyable synthesiser coffee. If she left Bone's office now, it would have been too tempting to not return. When she took her seat once again, she could sense how slumped her frame had become. She found she was beyond caring.

 _Just one more stack of reports and I’ll take a break_ , Kirk bargained internally.

She sipped her coffee with a hiss. It was tepid. 

She knew she should be limiting her coffee intake. Right now there was probably more caffeine than blood in her system but she chugged the rest of her mug, rubbed her eyes and pulled the next report into her lap leaning practically in half as she read the miniscule text.

‘Poor posture can lead to further pain later in life,’ a voice said from behind her.

‘Mr Spock, the only pain in my life right now is the two men in this office and the federation who are determined to turn the Enterprise into a plague ship.’

She turned to see Spock had smiled at her dry humour as he stepped into the office. Instead of walking towards her, he went to the synthesiser to fetch two cups of green tea. Kirk had grown fond of green tea thanks to Spock. At first she had found the taste to be earthy and unfamiliar. Now, she enjoyed every cup they shared.

There were still a massive number of files which required Kirk’s signature. If Spock had still been in on active duty he could have aided in signing the forms. Having forfeited his role for the time being he was unfortunately little help. Instead it appeared he had decided to pass the time with Kirk as a companion, albeit a silent one.

As late night turned to early morning and early morning made way to a more acceptable waking hour, Kirk’s head was pounding. She had long since switched her green tea back to strong black coffee, to hell with cutting back on the caffeine. She’d inject it straight into her veins if she thought Bones would let her. Indeed, she made a mental note to request access to some energy hypos from the still sleeping CMO. She needed every boost she could get. Right now, with only around twenty more documents to read and sign Kirk could finally see light at the end of the tunnel. Although by this point the light at the end of the tunnel would only have given her a migraine.

When Kirk signed the last form, she placed down the pen with a feeling of satisfaction, or perhaps desperation. She had read and signed an entire desk’s worth of medical reports and suggested protocol. Signed in triplicate she might add. Her hand was beyond cramping, it was essentially a claw. She massaged her hand lethargically. Her eyes were stinging and dry. Her movements finally stirred Bones from his slumber, he checked his watch blearily, visibly confused as to why Kirk was still in his office.

‘I have finished reading the reports, Bones,’ Kirk said, her voice hoarse with drowsiness. ‘I’m returning to my post.’

Bones grunted. He was confused as to why she had remained there, but when he received an explanation his curiosity was replaced by exhaustion once again. His head thumped back in his book like it was memory foam.

‘Goodbye Doctor,’ Kirk said through a yawn. ‘Goodbye Spock. I suggest you find something that entertains you that doesn’t involved watching our doctor as he sleeps. I doubt he would appreciate it.’

Spock stood up, echoing Kirk’s movement.

‘I shall find something suitably entertaining then, Jim,’ he said with a small quirk of his lips.

'I suspect you will.'

Kirk dragged her heavy body back to the bridge to endure the thirty minutes before Sulu was to report for duty. She spent it in terse silence. As she predicted the artificial and bright light of the bridge had incited a migraine. Kirk closed her eyes and breathed slowly. She could bide her time.

_Just a little longer._

Thankfully Sulu was a punctual man and he arrived in a timely manner. Kirk offered him her chair with visible relief. Sulu could tell that Kirk was tired, the bruises under her eyes from the wayward blow of a security officer disguised the dark shadows of exhaustion under her eyes, but the redness of her eyes couldn’t be concealed. Her usually pristine hair and uniform looked dishevelled.

Sulu relieved her of her post, sitting in the Captain’s chair.

‘Get some rest, Captain.’

‘Gladly,’ she said with a smile.

‘Long shift?’

She checked the time.

‘I’ve been working for… forty hours straight, Mr Sulu.’

‘You must be beat. Go get some rest and some food.’

‘Aye aye, Mr Sulu,’ she grinned as she walked to the elevator.

Kirk had her issues with authority as she tried to deal with the federation admiralty, but this was one order she was more than willing to follow. With twelve hours until she had to relieve Sulu from his shift, Kirk’s bed was calling her name. She had a lot to deal with when she returned but right now, the blissful allure of slumber was too powerful to resist.


	9. Chapter 8: The Good Doctor Says Too Much

Kirk was only one woman.

But she was one woman currently expected to do the work of a captain and first officer. A Vulcan first officer, whose physiology meant that he could work longer, harder and without exhaustion far more than a human could.

Kirk’s job may have involved exploring new worlds but these days, her own world had condensed down to two things, work and sleep.

With exhaustingly long shifts, she was being ground to the bone. Just covering Spock’s shifts was a colossal task. Scotty and Sulu were capable of performing their own duties and taking their turns in command to relieve Kirk for those precious few hours of rest. However, the Enterprise was still running on a skeleton crew and for Kirk, most times delegating work was simply not an option.

One evening Spock had entered Kirk’s cabin to play their regular chess game only to find her already asleep in her bed, fully dressed, shoes and all. She had entered her room, dived for her bed and been asleep in seconds. She had been working for thirty seven hours straight and her energy banks were well and truly depleted. Even energy shots were beginning to lose their effectiveness. Over the last two weeks it was no longer unusual for Spock to find Kirk asleep anywhere in her cabin. Spock had walked out of her cabin softly. Kirk didn’t even stir.

At first Spock had been curious about Kirk’s recent exhaustion. He hadn’t been around to observe her eating habits, so low iron could be an option. In his experience he knew that to be a common ailment of humans, particularly their women. Or perhaps she was falling ill. It would not be beneficial to the ship if her captain were the next to fall victim to the sickness that was still lingering aboard.

With Kirk seldom available, he could not simply ask her so Spock decided to travel to the sickbay to consult the good doctor. After all, a human doctor would have a better insight than a Vulcan scientist. It was the logical thing to do.

Bones however was not in his office, where Spock had grown accustomed to finding him. These days, if Bones was not making his rounds across the ship to visit the rooms of the afflicted, he could be found in his office swearing and muttering his way through the stacks of paperwork that littered his office, multiplying every day at a rate that would have left a tribble astounded. Spock’s next best bet was the sickbay. Bio-suits were no longer necessary in the sickbay as the disease restrictions lessened week by week according to standard ship protocol. It meant Spock could just walk into the main area of sickbay without having to return to his own cabin to don his suit. At times, it was almost possible to believe things were returning to normal aboard the ship.

‘Nurse Chapel,’ Spock greeted with an easy smile that the nurse returned a hundredfold. Not everyone was so uncomfortable with the sudden change in the half-vulcan’s demeanour. On the whole she seemed to enjoy his new, more human nature.

‘Mr Spock, to what do we in sickbay owe this pleasure? Do you have another check-up?’

Bones had insisted on almost daily check-ups to ensure Spock remained in perfect health. By now, Spock had been experiencing the effects of the pollen for just over three weeks. He had told Bones on multiple occasions that such cautions were unnecessary and over cautious, but Bones had been firm. If Spock didn’t show up for the appointments then Bones would hunt him down like a prize deer and conduct his check-up with a much more colourful display of insults. Today, this was not the case.

‘Not right now, Nurse. However I am looking for the doctor.’

‘McCoy? I’d say go to the science labs, Mr Spock. Doctor McCoy has been spending all his free time there recently.’

‘Thank you Nurse,’ Spock said politely before nodding and making his leave.

Nurse Chapel watched Spock walking away. Despite the unimaginable pressure the crew of the Enterprise had been under for the last few months, the fervour about Spock and his new personality had spread, perhaps more quickly than the virus.

Nurse Chapel with more than a passing crush on the Vulcan was perhaps a little more invested than the common man.

The elegant half-vulcan, well read and intelligent had been a man who would always be at arm’s length. He was an unattainably fantasy for many crew members who were content to fawn over him from a distance. The bolder of the crew who would admit their feelings to him would always be let down as brutally honest as only a Vulcan could do. He was a heart-breaker in his own right.

Who wouldn’t want a tall, handsome, genius from a good family with a good job?

Now that he was something a little more relaxed, he seemed more tangible. Chapel heard her own group of friends gushing with excitement that Spock had been singing so dreamily in the rec rooms, how he had smiled when he hummed and played the lute, and how he had responded to conversations enthusiastically and with none of his usual stiltedness.

Had anyone approached him yet, confessing attraction?

Chapel held her PADD a little closer to her chest. Her heart was still thumping from the gentle smile he had gifted to her.

Would this new Spock be more aware of flirtations?

\---

Spock found Bones in Lab Twelve, hunched over a microscope and frowning. A dozen science officers milled around deeply involved in their work. Spock was unsure whether the frown was the doctor’s normal expression or if it was one of displeasure. Kirk could tell the subtleties of Bones’ expressions. But Spock had found it a challenge he could never quite master.

Spock observed Bones run a hand through his dishevelled hair, rubbing his eyes. When he looked up from the microscope, he saw Spock. Bone’s facial expression didn’t change when he laid eyes on his new visitor. From that, Spock deduced that the doctor’s expression had already been set to one of great frustration and displeasure.

‘It is unusual to see you in the labs, Doctor,’ he noted.

‘That may well be so, but it’s all hands on deck these days Spock and come hell or high water I’m going to find an antibody and vaccine for his virus before we arrive at the starbase and those arrogant condescending sons-of-bitches swan in and use their big labs to help _lil ol’ us_. Like hell will I let them get the glory.’

Bones’ frayed temper was apparent. Spock had heard of the Federation’s suggestion that Kirk and the Enterprise were incapable of cleaning up their own messes. They should have known better to question the abilities of a ship filled with the crème de la crème of skilled crewmembers. Bruised egos could be dangerous.

‘Is there much progress?’ Spock asked.

Bones ground his teeth. Spock had opened up the wrong can of worms.

‘Unfortunately for the last few days we’ve reached a bit of a standstill,’ Bones’ already lined brow furrowed ever deeper. ‘I never thought I’d say this but I think that if you had been assisting in the research it would have been advancing quicker, Spock.’

‘It is unfortunate that I am on temporary leave for time indefinite.’

Bones scowled even deeper. Spock had answered poorly.

Spock didn’t understand why, he had just stated that which was factual.

‘Don’t I know it,’ Bones griped. ‘What do you want Spock? I doubt you came all the way down here to tell me about how little help you’ll be.’

‘I merely came to find you to report the captain’s unusual levels of exhaustion these days. Perhaps a new check-up is in order.’

‘I don’t need to give Jim a check-up to know the cause of that Spock.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes Spock, it is remarkably clear to me why. You see, where you spend all you time in your room meditating or in the Botany storeroom growing daisies or whatever the hell you’re doing I’ve actually seen Kirk on a regular basis.‘

‘Very amusing Doctor, but I am not growing daisies in the Botany storeroom. It is quite interesting in-‘

‘I don’t care you’re growing Jack’s beanstalk, Spock. The real issue here is that Jim is working herself into the ground by covering both the work of you and her and every other senior officer currently indisposed. And perhaps that mightn’t be the biggest issue, if it weren’t for the fact that the entire ship is under quarantine and there’s light years of red tape to go through before Kirk can so much as tie her shoelaces.’ Bones had finally found a vent for his frustrations in the form of the unsuspecting half-vulcan. There was no stopping his complaints now that he had started. ‘There’s reams of forms to fill out for every step of the Contagious Virus Standard Operating Procedure which is time consuming enough as it is, but then the Scotty and his engineers have been trying to blow themselves to smithereens just to prove that they can.

‘There’s been a dot on the periphery of the scanners for almost a month and every decision and every plan of action has to go through Jim. She’s been going from meeting to meeting, from ambassador to ambassador, admiral to admiral. People in suits and shiny medals think that the fact they’re on a Starbase and Jim’s on a starship means they’re the experts here. Jim has to bite her tongue as they try to blame the Enterprise for its incompetence and put the responsibility on her shoulders for something that was beyond her control.

‘It may be hard for a Vulcan to realise but exhaustion is a hard-core issue for those of the human persuasion. Kirk is living off ethers these days.’

Spock is silent for a long moment, ‘Doctor, I believe that the logical response to relieve some of the Captain’s responsibilities would be to ask me to return to active duty, or to force me back to my original mind state as she did before.’

Bones snorted.

‘Wouldn’t it just, Spock. But Kirk has it in her head that doing so deprived you of your only opportunity to feel happiness and she’s determined that she not let it get away a second time.’

Bones froze. He had gotten carried away in bothering Spock. But like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube was easy, and putting it back in was nigh on impossible the words once spoken now lingered in the air. They weren’t going away.

Spock was silent for a long stretch of time. Vulcans were accustomed to long periods of silence and contemplation but humans were not and Bones grew increasingly uncomfortable with each passing second.

‘I should leave you to your work Doctor,’ Spock said, succinctly after what had felt like an eternity. He turned on his heel and made his leave.

Bones wondered if he should have been so direct to the Vulcan. A mixture of his own frustration and unfamiliarity with dealing with this _different_ Spock had led to him getting carried away.

‘I said too much,’ Bones muttered under his breath. He took an unsteady sigh and turned his attention back to his microscope.


	10. Chapter 9: After the Climb

Right now, Kirk cared about one thing. It wasn’t the admiralty bothering her at every step as she tried to perform her job, the illness aboard the ship, or the pressures of the impossibly long hours. All those could wait. To Kirk the universe had centralised to one thing, the blip on the periphery of the ship’s sensors.

Its purpose was still unknown. Kirk had begun to think it was to specifically piss her off. That damned little rhythmically flashing dot, whose aim and creation she was sure had solely been to drive her to the end of her already frayed nerves had become her nemesis.

She had tried to establish contact so many times that the communications crew knew her orders before she gave them but still to no avail. She had contacted Federations ships who passed by on a similar route asking if they had encountered anything appearing on their radars, they had not. They were too far away for such a small vessel to even register on any of their sensors.

When Kirk had been given the final confirmation that the blip was not an error on the sensors she had snapped at the poor unsuspecting engineer to check it again. With his tail between his legs, he had scurried off to do just that, leaving Kirk to run her hands through her hair and rub her aching eyes.

Kirk’s current course of action had been to stoop to their level, whoever _they_ were, and begin to pursue the smaller vessel. It was rapidly becoming an infuriating game of cat and mouse that Kirk was less than amused to be a part of. With every step the Enterprise took forward the blip took one back.

Kirk could have yelled in frustration and if she had been alone, perhaps she would have. But she was not. She was on the bridge surrounded by crew who needed her to keep a face of calm and collected assuredness. They were just as bothered by the blip but Kirk had to assuage their nerves in her role of leadership.

‘Please stay at your posts and continue pursuit,’ Kirk announced. ‘Thank you for your continued work. I shall be back momentarily. Sulu, mind the helm.’

‘Aye Captain,’ Sulu replied.

Kirk stood from her chair stiffly. Her hand had been clenched tightly in frustration as the minutes had passed and it became clear that her direct approach had been less successful than she had hoped.

The knee jerk reaction would be to speed up pursuit but that would escalate the situation. If the vessel was not built for speed then it would be immediately destroyed if the Enterprise collided with it. If it ended in a high speed chase then the Enterprise could easily be led by the nose to an area of space of their faceless adversaries choosing.

She needed a moment to clear her head.

She left the Bridge, rubbing her stinging and dry eyes. She knew she was exacerbating the pain but she couldn’t find it in her to resist. Her heart was pumping fast, an anxious tattoo that Kirk couldn’t still. Both were side effects of the energy supplements Bones had reluctantly been providing her when required.

‘Caffeine hypos are for emergency situations, Jim. They’re to keep an officer working longer, fighting longer where necessary,’ Bones had warned her just that morning.

‘I think a plague ship pursued by an unknown force and led by a skeleton crew quantifies an emergency situation Doctor,’ Kirk had countered.

Bones had scowled and jabbed the hypo in with excessive force as usual. Kirk groaned at the stinging sensation.

‘I’d prefer it much more if you just got some damn sleep, Jim,’ Bones grumbled on Kirk’s every increasingly frequent visits.

‘As would I, Bones. As would I.’ But even if Kirk had gotten the opportunity to sleep, it would not come to her. How could she sleep when her head with filled with thoughts of every catastrophe that may happen aboard the ship?

She did what she had to do, all she could do, for sake of the crew aboard the Enterprise.

This morning, on the way out of the sickbay Kirk pilfered a handful of caffeine hypos from the nurse’s cart. Nurse Chapel raised a brow at her less than subtle thievery.

‘Doctor’s orders Captain?’

‘They should be,’ Kirk said with a relaxed, almost lazy smile. A woman with no cares in the world.

Nurse Chapel looked unsure.

‘I’m getting sick of travelling down here five times a day for our curmudgeonly doctor to deliver hypos to me like I’m the woman who kicked his puppy.’

Nurse Chapel chuckled at that.

‘Then shoo before he sees you.’

Kirk winked at Nurse Chapel, a sistership of subterfuge.

She had used the last hypo five hours ago. 

\---

Kirk’s next destination was to her office to call the starbase the Enterprise would be approaching soon. They had been asked to be kept abreast of any updates in the ship’s situation. Upon opening communication with the starbase Kirk was greeted by the scowling faces of three federation higher-ups.

‘Good evening gentlemen,’ Kirk greeted. ‘An update into the ship’s condition, as you requested. Our crew still in quarantine and sickbay are healing well and new cases of the virus have been steadily declining. ‘

There was a unison grumbling of approval from the three men on the screen. Much to Kirk’s displeasure she noted that Admiral Maxin, the cheap imitation of Admiral Calloway, was on the supervising team in today’s meeting.

‘However,’ Kirk continued, preparing to stir up further complaints from the admirals, because everything in her life was a trial these days, ‘The Enterprise has had something on her tail for almost a month now.’

‘Around the time of the ship’s quarantine was established?’ Commander Vine asked, a short-tempered but competent higher officer who had a shock of naturally thick brown hair despite his advanced age.

‘Negative Admiral. It was around two weeks after its establishment.’

The other two men on her screen looked visibly shocked at this.

Someone hadn’t been reading Kirk’s reports.

Commander Westin, a human man whose time spent on Orion soil had led to him getting a body filled with ornamental tattoos, looked uneasy. His expression of horror told his concern over a weakened crew and a starship ripe for the picking from a stalking vessel, biding its time.

Admiral Maxin, who had apparently taken a vested interest in the fate of the Enterprise, or had at least a sick fascination with their progress, looked supremely furious, resenting an implication that Kirk had never suggested.

‘How dare you accuse Starfleet of spying on its own ships, Captain Kirk. The audacity,’ he raged. Maxin was red and mottled at the implication that only he had made.

Kirk in her exhausted state couldn’t help but be amused at the anger. Sensibly, she kept it concealed. If Bones were in the room he’d have been standing trembling with rage emitting from every nerve-ending prepared to go toe to toe with the man too big for his boots.

Instead Kirk simply said, ‘it’d hardly be the first time Admiral but I doubt that’s the case.’

 _Scathing but still diplomatic. Spock would have been proud_ , she thought dryly.

‘I agree with the Captain,’ Westin stated flatly.

‘I second that,’ Vine replied.

Maxin looked furious that his anger hadn’t been shared by his fellow admirals.

‘Is this something the Federation should be concerned about, Captain Kirk?’ Vine asked.

Kirk was surprised that a higher up was at last listening to her input.

‘No, Admiral Vine. I do not think this is a reason for concern anyone outside of the ship right now. However, I should like to keep you abreast of the situation.’

‘How can the captain claim this situation is okay? Look at her,’ Maxin asked his voice dripping with vitriol. ‘This woman before us is dishevelled and purple eyed. She’s clearly having some symptoms of the sickness that plagued her crew.’

Kirk rose from her chair. She felt her eye twitch in agitation.

‘With all due respect A-‘

‘-Admiral Maxin. Control your emotions or face repercussions,’ Westin snapped, disciplining the agitated man sharply. ‘You should respect the situation Captain Kirk and her crew are in. Down a lieutenant and stuck in quarantine, followed by an unknown anomaly is not an easy situation to be in.’

‘Apologies Captain,’ Vine added. ‘We do not intend to add to the pressures you are under. Rather we wish to aide in relieving them. We have designated a dozen labs to work on curing your virus as soon as you arrive at the starbase.’

‘Thank you Admirals. I shall leave you for the evening. ’

Kirk ended the call before returning to the bridge to update the crew. The meeting was the last thing expected of her duties today but that didn’t mean her work ended there. She updated her log, discussed what she had missed in her time at the meeting and even managed to stop down to sickbay to alert Bones about the labs prepared for their situation on the starbase. It would be helpful if Bones were to send over all the information and research he had so far gathered.

But, as Kirk had suspected, getting Bones to send over the information was a difficult task. Pulling a sore tooth from the mouth of an unsedated and enraged tiger would have proven easier, of that Kirk was certain. Kirk was sure Bones would have been more willing to hand over his firstborn child than his current research into helping end this illness around the ship. Still, Kirk eventually managed to get him to agree to it through the best means she knew how.

‘The starbase has a fine team of researchers, Bones,’ Kirk acknowledged pointedly.

‘Jim I doubt those starbase lab-rats would be able to tell one end of a thermometer from the other. It’s our research and I don’t want them to have it,’ Bones had snarled as he paced around the floor of the sickbay like a caged beast.

‘I understand Bones but are you telling me that with access to this information the science and medical officers aboard the starbase will reach a conclusion before our officers?’

‘Huh? What do you take us for? A high school science club? Jim we’ll have this cracked in no time, certainly before those starbase goons have finished scratching their heads.’

‘Well then, it shouldn’t trouble you to send over your information, if they are such little threat to your work.’

‘Damn right they’re not a threat,’ Bones growled, unaware that his option had done an entire one eighty rotation since the conversation had begun. ‘I’ll have the files send immediately. When the Enterprise cleans up its own messes before the starbase gets the chance, we’ll see who’s laughing.’

‘Of course Bones,’ Kirk said with a smile.

‘Get out of here,’ Bones grumbled. ‘Don’t think I don’t know how you twisted my thinking.’

‘Can I twist what is already twisted?’

‘Shoo. Go on. Shoo.’ Bones grumbled, wafting his hands in her direction until Kirk left the sickbay.

Kirk could hear him grumbling as she walked away.

Heavy footsteps carried her to the closest intercom.

‘This is Kirk to Bridge.’

‘Bridge to Kirk,’ Sulu replied.

‘I’m retiring to my chamber for the evening. Contact me if there are any updates.’

‘Affirmative Captain.’

Kirk needed to rest. She intended to get as much shut eye as she could before she had to face reality once again.

She trudged to her room and collapsed onto her bed, forgoing showering, or even stripping out of her uniform, this has become an increasingly regular occurrence of late. At least this time she managed to kick off her boots.

\---

Kirk woke hours later in a wave of overwhelming nausea. Despite her exhaustion, it woke her with the feeling of urgency. She threw her legs from her bed and stumbled to the bathroom. There, she collapsed to her knees before her toilet and retched and retched until her stomach was empty. The room around her was swirling as she grew disorientated with dizziness. Her heart was beating rapidly in her chest. Her hands were trembling, mutinously refusing to comply with her demands, coordination slipping. She tried, and failed to continue holding on to the bowl of the toilet. Her hands slipped uselessly to the coolness of the bathroom floor.

Something was wrong, that much was clear.

This wasn’t the symptoms of the illness on the ship.

This was something else.

If she were capable of intelligent thought and her head wasn’t stuffed with cotton, dulling her cognition Kirk might have been able to work out what ailed her. Right now though, her mind was distant, her vision swimming. Before consciousness slipped fully from her grasp, Kirk crawled from the bathroom to her desk. The distance was short, oftentimes almost claustrophobically so but to the enfeebled Kirk it was as arduous as a journey through a desert after a day’s dehydration. Finally, with weakened arms and uncoordinated legs, Kirk reached her desk. A trembling finger pressed her intercom weakly.

It would contact the room of whomever she had been talking to last. In no fit state to remain upright, let alone explain her sudden sickness, the alert would have to do. Kirk slipped to the floor, her arms and legs finally no longer able to support her weight. She curled into a ball as best she could. She was overwhelmingly hot and unbearably cold all at the same time. She didn’t know if the trembling was to cool or warm her but sweat dampened her face that she lacked the strength to wipe away. She wondered almost deliriously if she had been poisoned, a rare toxin taking its fatal hold on her human body, though she hadn’t eaten or drank in hours. She couldn’t maintain such thoughts much longer as the room writhed and swirled before her unfocused eyes.

As the room faded to black and she grew deafened as the darkness of unconsciousness took its hold, the last thing Kirk heard was the sliding open of her cabin’s door.

She let go and darkness prevailed.

\---

Spock strolled leisurely into Kirk’s quarters expecting to see the Captain up and ready to face the day, perhaps even already a good number of hours into her shift. Once upon a time, he would have been summoned to find Kirk ready to consult with him on a solution to the issue du jour aboard the Enterprise. Though lately, no longer on active duty, Spock’s role of Kirk’s sound-boarding had become an activity of the past.

What Spock received was none of those things.

A pale, sweating Kirk lay crumpled on the floor.

Spock rushed over and crouched beside her. With practiced familiarity he took her pulse. Her heartbeat was rapid and her breathing was shallow and too quick for optimal human standards.

She needed aid. She had to be taken to sickbay without delay.

Spock picked her up with ease and with long steps headed towards the turbolift.

Kirk’s body was broader than Spock’s, more curved and muscular than his lithe half-vulcan frame. She trained it hard and kept it strong but her musculature created a fuller figure than many other human females. Spock had been in situations where carrying his captain had been necessitated before. She had been self-conscious of her weight, illogically so. Writhing in his arms, protesting that despite injury she remained capable of walking, of fighting, even when Spock’s assistance was clearly the more logical option.

Initially Kirk’s rejection of his assistance had rankled. He was her second in command. His duties lay to her and the ship she commanded. Bones had called it an ‘insecurity of some human women’ in a tone that told Spock that he too didn’t fully understand the extent of the rationale behind the Captain’s frankly irrational aversion to being carried. Nurse Chapel had tried to enlighten Spock gently.

‘Perhaps the Captain dislikes feeling weak or incapable of looking after herself? A matter of pride?’

‘She has relied on me before during similar situations,’ Spock countered. ‘It is being carried she expressed aversion to.’

‘Then it is possible the Captain is conscious of her body.’

‘Why? She suffers no health conditions or deformities.’

Nurse Chapel had smiled at his words, though the reason behind her amusement was beyond Spock’s ability to ascertain. 

‘She might feel she is too big or heavy to carry,’ Chapel tried.

‘The Captain’s weight is in the healthy range for her size. It would be inappropriate for the Captain to not be up to Federation health standards and regulations. Regardless, the muscle fibres of a Vulcan’s body are significantly denser than that of a human. A Vulcan can apply greater force due to this increased strength in muscle tissue. Carrying her takes very little strain on my body.’

‘That will be reassuring to the Captain,’ Nurse Chapel had smiled, though internally, to his obliviousness, she had given up, the meaning would forever be lost in translation.

Spock hadn’t quite comprehended the human nuance behind Nurse Chapel’s well-meaning explanation. He didn’t know why, but the discomfort his Captain- no Jim- had expressed in his arms had unsettled him. Right now he would have taken her protestations, her frustrations, her complaints over her shivering and limp form. 

A wave of what was akin to possessiveness had arisen within Spock when he had wrapped Kirk into his arms. Had he been more familiar with expressing and processing emotions he might have recognised it as protectiveness. He often felt it around Kirk, but with her in his arms those feelings had been sent into hyper-drive. The untamed, primitive and emotional Vulcans of past had felt suddenly much less incomprehensible to Spock.

Right now, in the present, the slumped form of an unresponsive Kirk in his arms, Spock felt his emotions as viscerally as his ancestors. He no longer repressed such feelings. But unlike those emotions he had suppressed in his past, protectiveness was superseded by the sharp pang of concern, of worry, of dread. Of fear. His Captain, his friend was sick. In his arms, her small human frame seemed smaller than he grown accustomed to. She was still in her uniform but it no longer clung to her, well-fitted and shapely. She had lost weight. He could tell from a glance that her favourite green shirt, the one which wrapped attractively around her body would have been gaping, no longer as flattering. Her face was sallow, with dark bruising under her eyes that were nothing to do with the long-healed injuries she had sustained in training. Her lips were pale.

‘Jim,’ he had murmured fretfully in the turbolift, to no response.

‘It is going to be okay,’ he said. He didn’t know why. It was clear she was unconscious. It had just been an overwhelming urge, a need to attempt to soothe her despite knowing his words would be unheard.

In a similar situation Spock knew Kirk would have talked to him the whole time, ignoring how futile an exercise he would have believed it to be. To Kirk, comforting another was never a futile exercise.

He smoothed her unruly hair, which stuck to her scalp and forehead from her sweating. A gesture he found soothed him more than he knew it would her.

The doors to the turbolift opened and Spock walked to the sickbay, his shoes made a staccato click with every urgent step .

It was early afternoon aboard the Starship Enterprise and Bones already had a bone to pick with Spock, pun intended.

‘You’re late-’ he stopped when he saw what-or more accurately who- Spock held in his arms.

Immediately, the irritation in his face dropped and was replaced with concern.

‘Put her on this bed here, Spock,’ Bones directed, supervising as Spock placed the captain down as gently and with as little jostling as possible. Bones immediately was by her side, checking her vitals, looking at her pupils, under her eyelids. Taking in her symptoms Bones knew what had happened.

‘Silly, pig-headed, stubborn woman,’ Bones growled.

He had warned Kirk of the dangerous path she had been walking. Mugs of coffee constantly on hand through the entirety of her shifts, highly caffeinated drinks at every opportunity and energy shots were no longer enough to sustain her energy chemically. He’d warned her that she was working herself too hard. What happened after one climbed rung after rung of a precarious and rickety ladder, like the one that Kirk had been climbing for weeks now on borrowed energy?

The fall.

She was experiencing a kind of caffeine toxicity.

‘I think the captain-‘

‘Spock I don’t care if you think that Jim is turning into a gorn. You’re not needed here, I suggest you leave.’

‘Doctor I-‘

‘Dammit Spock, leave now. It’s your fault she’s in this damn state.’

The words were harsh and deep down Bones knew that they weren’t true. He lowered his head when he heard Spock leave wordlessly. He’d been too harsh. Spock hadn’t intended to become infected by a strange mind altering plant pollen, and he couldn’t have predicted his inability to work would have placed too much stress on Jim. Under any other circumstance, the Enterprise would have had a strong team to step up and assist the captain. And Bones knew more than most how Jim liked to place the weight of every problem she encountered squarely on her own shoulders. She was no doctor, and she couldn’t heal the people aboard this ship, nor could she assist the scientists in quickening the development of a remedy, so she had thrown herself into going above and beyond elsewhere. She was atoning for a sin she had not committed.

James T. Kirk, in her opinion alone, had failed her ship and its crew.

Her recklessness and self-destruction was self-flagellation, a penance she could never forgive.

Bones didn’t like that she had worked to her breaking point but he could understand why.

He would have to apologise to Spock later but for now he had to focus on his patient. It was imperative to lower her blood pressure, get rid of some of the synthetic chemicals that had been giving Kirk false energy, remove the caffeine in her body and attempt to soothe the worst of her symptoms. Most importantly, Bones was determined that Kirk was going to be on twenty-four hour bed rest whether she wanted to or not. He’d strap her to the damn bed if he had to. Sulu or Scotty could take over command. Hell, let Chekov try, he was always raring to get a go in the big bad captain’s chair.

Let him deal with the red tape it came with.

Bones worked quickly, skilfully and without the aid of a nurse. He suspected that Kirk would be ashamed of her weakness when she awoke. He pulled the curtain around the bed for some more privacy, it wasn’t much but at least no one else need see Kirk in this state. The least he could do was keep this incident as quiet as possible.

Kirk’s skin was pale, even worse so under the fluorescent glow of the artificial lights aboard the starship, and he could see the shortness of her breath, even in her unconsciousness. She was cold to the touch but sweating, making her skin clammy. Her cheeks were flushed and her small pink lips were chapped. It looked painful. Dehydration had caused her lips to be chapped, but the raw areas and cuts were from Kirk’s own worrying and biting. Her agitation, stress and frustration had been torn into her lips.

Bones puffed an angry exhalation of air but his hands were gentle when he pulled down Kirk's lower eyelids to reveal a pale pink, almost white where he had been hoping to find a healthy red. It just was another sign of Kirk’s neglect of her own body. Anaemia from choosing coffee and energy shots over food. Bones ground his teeth.

His tricorder scan of Kirk’s body showed some heart palpitations too and Bones cursed the world around him. He cursed Spock and his stupidity for getting the pollen of that damn plant all over him, he cursed Kirk and her stupidity for not looking after herself and most of all he cursed his own stupidity that he had got so caught up in proving the Starfleet big-wigs wrong and rubbing his skills in their faces that he hadn’t noticed Kirk running herself in sickness right before his very eyes.

Bones stepped beyond the curtain, returning with the appropriate hypos that would help Kirk flush that caffeine out of her system as soon as possible and the painkillers for whenever she came to and inevitably realised she had a migraine akin to a sledgehammer to the back of the head.

It wasn’t necessary but Bones pilfered some lip balm from the drawer of the nurse’s station, putting some on Kirk’s lips. He had been too late to prevent Kirk’s pain; the least he could do was try to soothe it a little more.


	11. Chapter 10: The Selfishness of Man

Spock left the sickbay under a cloud of confusion. His heart palpitated uncomfortably in his abdomen.

Bones’ accusatory words had unsettled him.

Was he truly at fault for Kirk’s current condition?

Rationally thinking, Spock was aware that Kirk had to work more due to his absence. He also knew that Scotty, who would often take over command when needed, had his own issues to deal with in Engineering, leaving Kirk to do more work atop of her own duties _and_ Spock’s. He knew how stubborn the Captain could be, how unwilling to acknowledge she needed assistance. As he returned to his chambers, Spock calculated easily how much more work would be required. The calculations and estimations swirled through his head, one constant familiar action in the thick fog of emotions which unsettled his mind.

Was it so unthinkable that as a direct result of his altered condition Kirk had suffered?

In reality, Spock should have been all too aware that his own actions had aided in this happening.

Correction.

He _had_ been all too aware of his actions. And yet he had done nothing.

Spock realised with a start that he had become self-absorbed in his newfound emotional freedom.

He had dedicated his time entirely to leisure and to pleasure at the cost of his career and his reputation. Whilst it didn’t bother him objectively, a tightening in his throat and a burning sensation in the pit of his stomach made him feel a new emotion.

Guilt.

A feeling of remorse for doing something that was wrong. The sense that what had happened was his fault. It was _wrong_ that Kirk had worked herself to illness due to his own passivity. Whilst Spock had indulged his passions, growing plants, playing music and other leisurely pursuits, others had to pick up his slack. Kirk had to take on the responsibilities he had dropped thoughtlessly on a whim. What, to Spock, had been the tossing of a toy over the side of his cradle that he had grown bored with, was a crushing weight on the shoulders of his captain.

Spock could feel his face flush deeply, a green hue colouring his usually colourless features. This sensation was not a pleasant one. Spock cared deeply for Kirk and with all the rationality possible Spock could not deny that Kirk’s current ailment was not in a major way his fault.

He was ill at ease.

Upon return to his room Spock moved to the bathroom, looking in the small mirror which hung on the wall there. It showed the reflection of a half-man, half-vulcan troubled and discontent. He had walked a leisurely path for the last few weeks of his affliction. He had allowed himself to experience that which he had felt on Omicron Ceti III once again. On that planet he had experienced joy, contentment and bliss at the hands of Leila and the stunning planet she had lived on. Aboard the Enterprise, Spock had sought out such feelings once again and had found them in his own hobbies and interests. But now almost a month later, Spock was experiencing his first view into the wide range of human emotions he had not discovered previously.

When a desperate and alone Kirk had drawn him back onto the ship during his first affliction and goaded him with insults and frustrations back to his natural state, she had forced him to feel anger and insult, the offence of a bruised and hurting pride. Where he had resorted to physicals blows, she had cut him down to nothing with a barbed tongue and razor sharp words. Only Kirk would have been able to drag Spock back to normality, only she knew him enough to know where he lay most vulnerable. She was his undoing. She had brought him back to the man he once was.

Why now had she allowed him to remain in this state? It confused Spock. He didn’t know why and he had been so involved in his own interests that he had never thought to ask.

Spock found he wished to look at his reflection no more. The man he saw reflected was not a man he recognised, nor one he would have wished to be associated with.

He spent the rest of the day, well into the late evening disquieted and deep in thought. He found his meditations beneficial but difficult and unforthcoming as his mind was awash in emotion. He had spent thirty five years learning how to suppress emotions and allow logic alone to fill his mind. Meditation did not come so easy to the man burdened with many thoughts, but it came harder still to the man overburdened with _feelings_.

Yet hours passed in his meditative state. It was respite for his body though much to his displeasure, not his mind. The intercom buzzed in the cusp between evening and night. Normally Spock would have been displeased at such an interruption. Today it could not have been more welcome. He stood up and approached the door.

His caller was Bones.

He looked tired.

‘To what do I owe the pleasure, Doctor?’

‘Spock,’ Bones began. He paused and took a slow breath to firm his resolve. ‘I’m sorry about my outburst earlier. I was already more frazzled than get out and madder than a wet hen. A knocked out Captain was just icing on the damn cake.’

Spock looked at the apologetic looking doctor standing before him. His stepped aside, silently welcoming him into his quarters. They sat at the low table in the room, and Spock expertly prepared them some drinks, tea for himself and a strong whiskey for the doctor. They sat in their usual comfortable silence. But after a while of silence and savouring their drinks, the conversation began to flow. It was the light and easy with familiar banter between two men who had already been in more life and death situations than they could count on their fingers and toes. Yet something lingered in the back of Spock’s mind which remained unspoken on his tongue. He found he wished to _confide_ in the good doctor before him.

_Another symptom of the pollen surely._

‘You look troubled Spock,’ Bones noted with expert perceptiveness.

Spock found he could bite his tongue no longer.

He didn’t want to. 

‘Doctor, inside me a war rages. The Vulcan within me revolts against the rising of my human instincts. I know it is because of the pollen which has affected me. Before, I believed that whatever uncertainty, whatever imbalance that resided within me could be settled by my intellect keeping control. Now, I find myself doubting that is the case.’

Bones said nothing, just supped his whiskey before exhaling a long-suffering sigh. He refilled his glass, once, twice, until he felt better prepared to reply.

‘You believe you are becoming out of control, Spock?’

‘In a way,’ Spock admitted, though he disliked saying it aloud. ‘I find I am… ashamed, Doctor.’

‘Do not be ashamed that you are different now Spock, adjusting can take time.’

‘I am not experiencing the effects of the pollen like the last time.’

‘How so?’

‘I’ve become selfish. I am ashamed that I did not notice- no. That is incorrect. I noticed the strains my absence placed upon the ship. If I had stopped to think, to process the effects my leave would create on board the ship, I would have realised the pressure it would have placed on the crew, on Jim. But I did not feel like it was my concern. I did not care and I focussed only on myself. It makes me feel guilt… shame.’

Bones chuckled, which visibly displeased Spock. Bones leaned across the table conspiratorially.

‘Why, that’s the most human thing you’ve ever said Spock. Humans _are_ selfish, and they’re self-centred to boot. You saw people struggle and you didn’t give a damn. That’s humanity. For every Joan of Arc sacrificing themselves for the greater good, there’s a Narcissus so lost in their own sense of importance they can never look past themselves. You’re more human now Spock, and that Half-Vulcan side isn’t really in the driver’s seat anymore. These are human emotions you’re experiencing. You’ll just have to get used to them if you’re really going to stay this way for a while. You do want to remain this way?’

‘I cannot tell if I wish to remain like this or if the pollen affecting me does not wish to lose its host,’ Spock replied honestly. It troubled him.

Bones nodded sympathetically.

Spock looked visibly upset, or as much as it was possible for the half-vulcan. It was still a subtle nuanced expression. To Bones who had been struggling to read Spock’s expressions for years, it was like identifying a clear sky after months of cloudy greyness. It was in the slight downwards glance, in his avoidance of Bones’ gaze, in ignoring his tea, wholly oblivious to it cooling down quickly. Bones could read it more easily than he ever had.

Bones pursed his lip. He was prickly and acerbic but he cared about Spock. To see his old friend upset made him feel upset too. He frowned and took another sip of his whiskey. The synthesiser could never perfect that woody, barrel taste of whiskey but that wasn’t the reason it sat uneasily in the pit of his stomach.

Bones didn’t know if he had the right to tell Spock this, but he could hold it back no longer.

‘It ate her up inside to revert you back to normality Spock, damn near broke her.’

Spock looked confused, or as confused as his subtle countenance could show.

‘Kirk,’ Bones clarified. ‘It wasn’t easy for her to take you back on board and goad you into shaking off those pollens. She had seen how happy you were, how content you were on that planet and how in love with Laila you were. Don’t you realise that’s all she wants from you Spock? Happiness?’

Spock said nothing.

Bones continued, his whiskey loosening his tongue perhaps more than it should have. What did it matter? He had already opened the dam; it was too late to stop the flow of words now.

‘She wanted your happiness, and the opportunity was given to you and she had to strip it away and remove any chance you could have at leading a normal, happy life.’

Spock _had_ been upset when Kirk had forced him to return to normal aboard the ship hovering over Omicron Ceti III but the emotion was quickly recovered from. His desire to remain on the planet by Leila’s side had been entirely created by the pollen which affected him. Now, once more affected, he could fully process how challenging it must have been for Kirk to force him back to normality.

Spock thought about Kirk, how, despite her absolutely quintessentially _human_ outlook on everything, she had managed to sacrifice herself in the place of others once again. It had not upset him to return to normal once the effects of the pollen had faded. If the reciprocating emotion that Kirk had felt from evoking such rage in Spock had been how Spock found he felt now, ashamed, guilt ridden, and deeply troubled, Spock was glad of such a disappearance of his emotions. Where he had returned to his emotionally dulled state, Kirk had to survive much longer with these feelings inside her, always bubbling and eating away at her.

‘I did not resent Kirk’s actions then,’ Spock said quietly. ‘It was a logical and correct thing to do.’

‘Why Spock, you’d almost think there was still some hobgoblin left in your blood yet with all that talk about logic,’ Bones said dryly. He sipped his drink thoughtfully. ‘You know Spock, logic doesn’t apply to a human very well. And it certainly doesn’t apply to human women very well. In the case of James T Kirk, the term is practically alien. Her rationale wasn’t necessarily _logical_ but she felt guilty. She cares about you Spock, and she’d hurt you.’

‘Does she know that wasn’t the case?’ Spock asked. 

‘She knows Spock,’ Bones replied. ‘Then she beats herself up more, because she feels like you should feel that way.’

Spock was silent for a moment, he sipped his tea thoughtfully.

‘That is a lot of talk about feelings Doctor when I’m still unfamiliar with them.’

Bones laughed softly.

‘They’re primal savage beasts, emotions. Kirk is driven by these feelings, her heart and her head rule equally. Perhaps you can understand her reasoning to allow you to stay this way a little more.’

Spock paused.

‘Perhaps.’


	12. Chapter 11: The Sickbed

It took a moment for Kirk to recognise her surroundings when she awoke. The low light, the unfamiliar ceilings, it was all initially disorientating but when she realised she was not lying on the floor of her bathroom and was instead in the ship's sickbay things became clearer. Her head hurt, her throat was dry and her heart was beating oddly in her chest but she felt a damn sight better than she had been for the last few days, hell it was more like weeks. Kirk didn’t remember the last time she hadn’t felt a dull ache behind her eyes, or hadn’t had a head aching with a splitting migraine.

She reached, with trembling hands, to the decanter of water by her bedside; her shaking hands made the action a little more difficult than it needed to be. She gritted her teeth and persevered, and then croaked a litany of curses when her uncoordinated hands knocked over the glass beside the decanter, sending it smashing to the ground.

The noise of glass impacting the ground caused Kirk to flinch. It undoubtedly had bothered the other crew members in the sickbay. She didn’t know if it was morning or night but regardless, the noise would not have been appreciated. However, the noise did more than bother any other recovering crewmen. It also alerted Nurse Chapel who opened the curtain that surrounded Kirk’s bed to find her noble captain was once again awake, and lying halfway out of bed, a guilty expression on her face.

‘Ah! Good to see you up, Captain,’ Chapel walked to Kirk, assisting her back into bed and picking up the larger shards of glass. ‘Let me deal with this mess. I presume you were reaching for some water and miscalculated.’

‘That would be correct,’ Kirk croaked.

It didn’t take long for Nurse Chapel to remedy Kirk’s clumsiness and fetch Kirk a new glass and filling it with water. She assisted Kirk in taking a few sips. Kirk was grateful that Chapel didn’t hold the glass to her lips like she was a child and instead allowed her to hold with glass with trembling, enfeebled fingers while Chapel supported it. So she could feel like an invalid, but an adult one.

After another few sips Kirk tried to talk. ‘Thank you for your help Nurse Chapel. If you’d be so kind to prepare for my departure from the sickbay, I’ll be resuming my post shortly.’

‘Not without a doctor’s confirmation,’ Nurse Chapel said with the firmness of a woman who had to deal with this situation multiple times a day.

‘Surely Doctor M’Benga is about presently?’

M’Benga was a softer touch than her old friend, the other good doctor.

Nurse Chapel was firm, her stance unyielding.

‘Doctor McCoy will be there soon, Captain.’

‘Fine,’ she said, as if reluctantly accepting her defeat at the hands of the staunchly intractable medical officer. In truth, Kirk knew she was currently unfit to return to her duties. Eager for Bones to arrive and soon, Kirk could still feel the uncomfortable sensation of her heart palpitating in her chest. It was a grim tattoo not allowing her to forget how her own stubborn-headedness had led to this situation having happened in the first place.

Bones arrived quicker than anticipated, just as Kirk was weakly falling into a fitful nap, one which despite her time asleep, still felt sorely needed. With no greeting and no preamble, Bones took her pulse and scanned her thoroughly with a quick professionalism. She wondered dozily if he thought her fully asleep and not in that middle ground where wakefulness had not fully surrendered to dreams.

‘How many energy shots did you take then, Captain?’ a harsh voice asked.

Kirk opened her eyes, met by a heavily furrowed brow and a dark scowl.

‘Greetings to you too Doctor.’

‘Don’t play coy Jim, it doesn’t suit you.’

‘Not many, maybe a couple.’

She paused.

‘Every few hours.’

She looked at the unsympathetic doctor.

‘For the last week or so,’ she finally admitted.

‘Christ Jim, it’s a miracle your heart is beating at all, let alone arhythmically. I’m not letting you leave here for at least another two days, and for damn sure you’re not allowed near any form of caffeine at all. So much as a sip of tea and I’ll figure out a way to get your thrown in the brig. My diagnosis was caffeine overdose and chronic overwork. Do you want to render yourself useless? One less crew member is just what the ship needs right now.’

Kirk said nothing.

She understood Bones’ ire. She was plenty mad at her own actions too. She looked at the feeble trembling of her hands in silence. It was caused by her sickness but she didn’t like the weakness it implied. To Bones, Kirk looked small and fragile in the sickbay bed, her larger than life charismatic presence often tricked people into thinking she were superhuman, invulnerable to the weaknesses of her human race. Bones knew better than most how untrue that was, but his heart filled with sympathy to see her there.

‘You’ll be back to your fighting form soon Jim,’ Bones said, his tone softened. ‘While this ship is in the condition it’s in, it’s important you don’t forget to look after yourself too.’

‘I know Bones. Thank-you.’

‘Get some rest, I’ll call by again later.’

‘How is the situation in-‘

‘Rest first, Jim,’ Bones said firmly. ‘You can worry about work later.’

Kirk had no choice but to accept defeat. If only for now.

\---

Kirk managed a few fitful hours of sleep though she often awakened with her heavy heart beating in her chest. She was aided in sipping some water several times by the nurses, keeping hydrated was a must but she still didn’t trust more than a sip or two at a time. When she was more wakeful she even managed to eat some toast unaided, though the crumbs it left in the bed made her regret it.

Later in what might have been the evening, although Kirk couldn’t be entirely sure what time it was, Spock came to visit. In her fitful and half dazed sleep she saw him enter and sit in the chair beside her, looking over her charts and her stats with an expert and knowledgeable eye. She was on the cusp of sleep and wakefulness, her breathing slow and even enough that for Spock it appeared she was fully asleep. Until the uneven beating of her heart jolted her back to a fuller wakefulness, denying her the luxury of slipping to sleep.

‘Jim?’ Spock, ever observant murmured.

‘Spock,’ she replied, her voice soft and gritty from its lack of use.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Tired. Help me drink a little.’

Her throat was dry but her hands were still shaking. Similar to how Chapel had assisted earlier Spock handed Kirk the glass, then sensing that she couldn’t hold it herself, held it steady. She sipped carefully.

She was falling asleep as she was drinking and he determined it would be dangerous for her to keep doing so. Spock put the glass back as Kirk was drifting off to sleep. She protested gently, grabbing his hand softly when he took the cup away and placed it to the side.

She didn’t let go of his hand before she drifted off to sleep.

Spock, found oddly, he was unwilling to take back his hand from Kirk’s soft embrace despite the fact he could have extracted his hand with ease. To humans it was an intimate gesture. It could mean anything from comfort to protectiveness but for Vulcans it was a far closer gesture. Like this Spock could so easily touch his index and middle finger gently to Kirk’s own. The Vulcan finger touching, the gentle brush of finger tips, the simple tracing of one’s hand was an unmistakable in his culture.

Kirk had held Spock’s hand before. In the heat of a battle or in the high tension of a daring escape she had on occasion grabbed his hand to pull him faster out of a room, to run away from an explosion, to keep them together when sprinting through enemy territory. It didn’t feel the same now though. There was no urgency to the hand holding. It was a simple comforting gesture; Spock recognised it from his own childhood. Vulcan children were far sturdier than human child, equally as unlikely to succumb to illness like their adult counterparts. But in his youth Spock had fallen to an illness similar to the human flu. Subject to much mockery from his young peers who attributed his illness to his half-human weakness, teasing him in a hope to get an all too emotional rise from the young Spock, his mother had convinced him to take the day off away from his education and spend the day in bed where she had lay beside him, holding his hands gently, pressing a wet cloth to his forehead. She sang to him and talked with him. She taught him how to play old human board games, checkers, Othello and even a few card games and most lovingly of all she acquiesced and let him continue his studies in bed.

It was a rare occasion where Spock had embraced his human side in his youth. Amanda Grayson wholly human and wholly loving of Spock displayed her emotions towards her son freely, more than his father would have approved of. It had been important for his mother to ensure that Spock had felt loved during his time of illness, that he didn’t feel like his sickness was another reason to detest his human side. It had not made much sense to him as a child, and less so as an adult but today, altered as he was, comprehension had revealed itself in complete clarity.

When his mother had held his hand, he felt safe.

Spock wondered if Kirk felt the same way holding his hand.

It was an innocent gesture, hand clutching hand. It was a reassurance that Kirk was not alone. It should have meant very little but Spock couldn’t help but attribute more weight to the contact.

He _wanted_ to attribute meaning to the contact.

His face had flushed green, his cheeks growing hot as he looked at Kirk’s smaller hand in his. His body betrayed him further by flushing even darker when Nurse Chapel walked by and greeted him kindly. She didn’t seem to notice the gesture but Spock had to resist the temptation to pull his hand back quickly, like a schoolboy who had had been caught elbow deep in the cookie jar. Embarrassment burnt, an unfamiliar sensation, an emotion he had not before experienced in his unfiltered state but snatching his hand back as if Kirk’s touch was electric would have only drawn attention to the embrace. The very thought embarrassed him even more. Embarrassment was a deep pit. Once it started it was easier to feel it greater than to shake it off, Spock was learning.

Instead, Spock sat with Kirk until he could no longer, rubbing idle patterns on the back of her hand with his thumb. It soothed him, almost hypnotically to feel Kirk’s skin against his own. Her hands were rough and calloused. The work of a captain was more than just constant meetings and delivering orders from a command chair and a woman like Kirk was a particularly hands-on leader. He could feel in every rough patch of skin, in every cut, or scar, the effort that Kirk put in to being the best she could be. How she worked for the good of the crew and the betterment of herself. There was something so human about that sentiment but it was a rare one that he knew he shared with his captain.

Something they had in common.

Spock’s heart lurched heavy in his abdomen and he extracted his hand from Kirk’s as gently as he could before he stood up. His hand was cold from the loss of heat, and it now felt strangely empty but he didn’t dwell on or mourn the loss of contact. With a final glance at his captain, he left the sickbay with long strides. He no longer wished to be there, though he could not articulate why.

It was wholly irrational and completely illogical why he had wanted to stay there and yet leave with equal fervour. Ultimately leaving won out and as a slave to his humanity and ergo to his whims, Spock returned to the Botany storeroom where he had become so fond of spending his time.

There he sought a solace that deep down he knew plants and this life of leisure couldn’t bring. 

Though what he truly sought, he may never find.


End file.
